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AN    AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 


MY 


SCHOOLS  AND  SCHOOLMASTERS; 


OR,    THE 


STORY  OP  MY  EDUCATION. 


Br 


HUGH   MILLER 


AUTHOR    OF    "THE    OLD    RED    SANDSTONE."    "FOOTPRINTS    OF   THE    CREATOR," 
"FIRST  IMPRESSIONS  OF  ENGLAND  AND  ITS  PEOPLE,"  ETC. 


'  Love  had  he  found  in  huts  where  poor  men  lie  5 

His  daily  teachers  had  been  woods  and  rills,  — 
The  silence  that  is  in  the  starry  sky,  — 
The  sleep  that  is  among  the  lonely  hills." 

Wordsworth. 


BOSTO N : 
O  OULD     A  N  D     LINCOLN, 

5  9     WASHINGTON     STREET. 

NEW    YORK:    SHELDON   AND    COMPANY. 

CINCINNATI:   GEO.  S.  BLANCH  ARD. 

I860. 


Entered  according  to  Act  of  Congress,  in  the  year  1854,  by 

GOULD    4    *  f.NCOLN, 

Id  the  Clerk's  Office  of  the  District  oourt  of  the  District  of  Massachusetts. 


TO 


THE     EBADEK 


It  is  now  nearly  a  hundred  years  since  Goldsmith 
remarked,  in  his  little  educational  treatise,  that  "  few 
subjects  have  been  more  frequently  written  upon  than 
the  education  of  youth."  And  during  the  century 
which  has  well  nigh  elapsed  since  he  said  so,  there 
have  been  so  many  more  additional  works  given  to 
the  world  on  this  fertile  topic,  that  their  number  has 
been  at  least  doubled.  Almost  all  the  men  who  ever 
taught  a  few  pupils,  with  a  great  many  more  wh<? 
never  taught  any,  deem  themselves  qualified  to  say 
something  original  on  education ;  and  perhaps  few 
books  of  the  kind  have  yet  appeared,  however  medio- 
cre their  general  tone,  in  which  something  worthy  of 
being  attended  to  has  not  actually  been  said.  And 
yet,  though  I  have  read  not  a  few  volumes  on  the 
subject,  and  have  dipped  into  a  great  many  more,  I 
never  yet  found  in  them  the  sort  of  direction  or  en- 
couragement which,  in  working  out  my  own  education, 
I  most  needed.     They  insisted  much  on  the  various 


IV  TO   THE   HEADER. 

modes  of  teaching  others,  but  said  nothing — or,  what 
amounted  to  the  same  thing,  nothing  to  the  purpose — 
on  the  best  mode  of  teaching  one's  self.  And  as  my 
circumstances  and  position,  at  the  time  when  I  had 
most  occasion  to  consult  them,  were  those  of  by  much 
the  largest  class  of  the  people  of  this  and  every  other 
civilized  country, — for  I  was  one  of  the  many  millions 
who  need  to  learn,  and  yet  have  no  one  to  teach  them, 
— I  could  not  help  deeming  the  omission  a  serious  one. 
I  have  since  come  to  think,  however,  that  a  formal 
treatise  on  self-culture  might  fail  to  supply  the  want. 
Curiosity  must  be  awakened  ere  it  can  be  satisfied ; 
nay,  once  awakened,  it  never  fails  in  the  end  fully  to 
satisfy  itself ;  and  it  has  occurred  to  me,  that  by  sim- 
ply laying  before  the  working  men  of  the  country  the 
"Story  of  my  Education,"  I  may  succeed  in  first  ex- 
citing their  curiosity,  and  next,  occasionally  at  least, 
in  gratifying  it  also.  They  will  find  that  by  far  the 
best  schools  I  ever  attended  are  schools  open  to  them 
all, — that  the  best  teachers  I  ever  had  are  (though 
severe  in  their  discipline)  always  easy  of  access, — and 
that  the  special  form  at  which  I  was,  if  I  may  say  so,  most 
successful  as  a  pupil,  was  a  form  to  which  I  was  drawn 
by  a  strong  inclination,  but  at  which  I  had  less  assist- 
ance from  my  brother  men,  or  even  from  books,  than 
at  any  of  the  others.  There  are  few  of  the  natural 
sciences  which  do  not  lie  quite  as  open  to  the  working 
men  of  Britain  and  America  as  geology  did  to  me. 
My  work,  then,  if  I  have  not  wholly  failed  in  it, 


TO  THE   READER.  V 

may  be  regarded  as  a  sort  of  educational  treatise, 
thrown  mto  the  narrative  form,  and  addressed  more 
especially  to  working  men.  They  will  find  that  a 
considerable  portion  of  the  scenes  and  incidents  which 
it  records,  read  their  lesson,  whether  of  encouragement 
or  warning,  or  throw  their  occasional  lights  on  pecu- 
liarities of  character  or  curious  natural  phenomena,  to 
which  their  attention  might  be  not  unprofitably  direct- 
ed. Should  it  be  found  to  possess  an  interest  to  any 
other  class,  it  will  be  an  interest  chiefly  derivable  from 
the  glimpses  which  it  furnishes  of  the  inner  life  of  the 
Scottish  people,  and  its  bearing  on  what  has  been 
somewhat  clumsily  termed  "the  condition-of-the-coun- 
try  question."  My  sketches  will,  I  trust,  be  recognized 
as  true  to  fact  and  nature.  And  as  I  have  never  pe- 
rused the  autobiography  of  a  working  man  of  the  more 
observant  type,  without  being  indebted  to  it  for  new 
facts  and  ideas  respecting  the  circumstances  and  char- 
acter of  sjome  portion  of  the  people  with  which  I  had 
been  less  perfectly  acquainted  before,  I  can  hope  that, 
regarded  simply  as  the  memoir  of  a  protracted  journey 
through  districts  of  society  not  yet  very  sedulously  ex- 
plored, and  scenes  which  few  readers  have  had  an  op- 
portunity of  observing  for  themselves,  my  story  may 
be  found  to  possess  some  of  the  interest  which  attaches 
to  the  narratives  of  travellers  who  see  what  is  not 
often  seen,  and  know,  in  consequence,  what  is  not 
generally  known.  In  a  work  cast  into  the  autobio- 
graphic form,  the  writer  has  always  much  to  apologize 


VI  TO   THE   KEADER. 

for.  With  himself  for  his  subject,  he  usually  tells  not 
only  more  than  he  ought,  but  also,  in  not  a  few  in- 
stances, more  than  he  intends.  For,  as  has  been  well 
remarked,  whatever  may  be  the  character  which  a 
writer  of  his  own  Memoirs  is  desirous  of  assuming,  he 
rarely  fails  to  betray  the  real  one.  He  has  almost 
always  his  unintentional  revelations,  that  exhibit  pecu- 
liarities of  which  he  is  not  conscious,  and  weaknesses 
which  he  has  failed  to  recognize  as  such ;  and  it  will, 
no  doubt,  be  seen,  that  what  is  so  generally  done  in 
works  similar  to  mine,  I  have  not  escaped  doing.  But 
I  cast  myself  full  on  the  good  nature  of  the  reader. 
My  aims  have,  I  trust,  been  honest  ones ;  and  should 
I  in  any  degree  succeed  in  rousing  the  humbler  classes 
to  the  important  work  of  self-culture  and  self-govern- 
ment, and  in  convincing  the  higher  that  there  are  in- 
stances in  which  working  men  have  at  least  as  legiti- 
mate a  claim  to  their  respect  as  to  their  pity,  I  shall 
not  deem  the  ordinary  penalties  of  the  autobiographer 
a  price  too  high  for  the  accomplishment  of  ends  so 
important. 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER  I. 

The  lit  le  boy  of  the  farm-house. — His  early  education. — Enters  the  navy.— A 
mutiiy.  and  its  happy  termination. — Instance  of  great  physical  strength. — Quits 
the  service. — Subsequent  adventures.— Enters  the  coasting  trade. — The  master's 
home.— Unhappy  accidents.— The  curate  of  Nigg.— Vessel  lost  in  a  storm.— 
Jack's  narrative  of  the  shipwreck.— A  second  marriage.— Terrible  anger  of  a 
good-natured  man 1 


CHAPTER   II. 

My  birth  and  parentage. — Mythologic  character  of  the  recollections  of  early  child- 
hood.— My  father  lost  in  a  storm  on  the  sea. — An  apparition. — A  dreary  season. 
— Stanzas. — My  early  education  and  reading. — Donald  Roy. — Supernatural  ele- 
ment in  the  religious  character  of  the  Highlanders. — Donald  become  a  Seceder. 
— Some  account  of  his  descendants. — My  two  uncles li» 


CHAPTER  III. 

Blind  Harry's  "  Wallace,"  and  its  effects  upon  me. — Enter  the  grammar  school. 
— Early  individual  development  correspondent  with  an  early  national  one. — 
Lessons  learned  at  the  grammar  school. — Bellicose  peat  expeditions. — The  par- 
ish schoolmaster.— My  progress  in  Latin.— Development  of  a  talent  for  story 
telling.— Became  a  sort  of  favorite  with  the  master.— The  yearly  cock-fight.- 
My  dislike  of  such  barbarous  exhibitions.— Evils  of  fixing  the  foundation  of 
ethics  on  the  practices  of  old  divines.— Old  Francie,  the  retired  clerk,  and  his 
curious  collections. — Lessons  learned  on  the  sea-shore. — The  blank  mica  and 
garnet  crystals  of  Cromarty.— Exploration  of  Cromarty  Hill.— A  wild  paradise 
of  rocks. — "  Celting  siller  in  the  stanes" 38 


Vlll  CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER   IV. 

Quiet  hours  in  the  Ebb  with  Uncle  Sandy.— Curious  anecdotes  of  crabs  and  lob- 
sters.— Notices  of  the  lump-fish. — Amphitrites  and  their  masonry. — Dye  fish  and 
beautiful  exotic  shells.— Evidence  that  the  relative  levels  of  sea  and  land  are 
not  altering.— Effect  of  winds  upon  the  tides.— Philosophy  of  the  drift  current 
and  gulf  stream. — Instincts  and  habits  of  insects. — Wild  bees  and  their  robbers. 
— Important  discoveries  of  fragmentary  vegetable  and  animal  remains. — The 
dropping  cave  of  the  Cromarty  Sutors. — Superstition  of  the  townspeople. — An 
appari lion.— The  Sutor  caves  as  seen  by  torchlight.— The  "  Puir  Wife's  Meal 
Kist"  and  the  Pigeon  Caves. — Exploration  of  Doocot,— formation  of  its  stalac- 
tites and  petrified  moss, — view  from  the  interior. — Imprisonment  by  the  tide. 
— Want  of  wings  sometimes  a  great  inconvenience. — Night,  and  a  storm. — 
Imaginary  evils  often  greatly  worse  than  real  ones. — A  midnight  voice  from  the 
rocks. — Deliverance. — The  incident  immortalized  in  some  enormously  bad 
verse 59 


CHAPTER   V. 

"Letters  of  a  Village  Governess,"  and  poor  Miss  Bond.— My  dislike  of  the  com- 
mon amusements  of  the  school.— A  run  of  ill-luck  in  my  sports.— The  sea-shore 
become  a  miniature  muster-ground. — Essays  in  bark-building  and  navigation 
unsuccessful. — Unlucky  accident,  and  "  break"  with  a  friend. — A  visit  to  the 
Highlands. — Family  worship. — Honesty  a  better  security  than  locks  and  bolts. 
— The  valley  of  the  Gruids, — its  interesting  features. — Cousin  William's  guests. 
— Authenticity  of  Ossian. — A  genuine  Celtic  breakfast. — Clan  stories  and  legend9 
)f  the  district.—"  No  fool  like  an  old  fool" 81 


tea 


CHAPTER  VI. 

Another  journey  to  the  Highlands.— A  delightful  residence.— Scenery  of  Loch 
Shin. — Memorials  of  the  barbarism  of  our  ancestors  fast  disappearing.— Charms 
and  love-fillers.— Celtic  theory  of  dreaming. —  A  congenial  companion. — Luxury 
of  seeing  one's  self  in  print.— A  suit  of  tartan  inconsistent  with  a  knowledge  of 
Gaelic. — An  interesting  excursion. — A  sad  story  in  a  solitary  valley. — The 
ealmon  leap  —A  lodge  in  the  wilderness.— A  sublime  p<  em  greatly  damaged 


CONTENTS.  ix 


PAGE 

in  the  reading.— Homeward  bound. —  A  story  thirty  miles  long  suddenly 
broken  off.— Night  among  strangers.— Cromarty.— The  end  of  the  righteous.— 
Further  desolations  of  death.— Glimpses  of  the  past.— Witch-burning.— Tales  of 
Culloden 1QQ 


CHAPTER  VII. 

The  subscription  school  and  its  schoolmasters. — Rory  Shingles' Cave. — A  wild, 
half-savage  life. — A  new  friend. — Inflammability  of  shale  due  to  the  animal 
substance  it  contains. — Evils  of  leadership. — A  serious  scrape. — Discipline  of  a 
wholesome  lesson. — The  new  schoolmaster.— Curious  revelations  of  arithmetic 
and  copy-books. — Increased  warmth  of  the  water  in  windy  days  accounted  for. 
— A  test  poem. — Offences  and  punishments. — Abrupt  termination  of  my  school 
education. — A  pasquinade. — A  broken  circle  of  companions. — Wise  plans  in- 
terrupted.—Johnstone,  the  old  forty-two  man.— A  desperate  enterprise  success- 
ful.—The  old  soldier's  difficulties 123 


CHAPTER   VIII. 

Choice  of  a  profession. — Work  in  the  Cromarty  quarries. — Dreams  of  a  hermit 
life  not  restricted  to  poets. — Nobility  of  toil. — Varieties  of  the  quarry  limestone. 
— A  taste  for  the  beauties  of  natural  scenery  a  never-failing  spring  of  delight. 
— Mental  depression  consequent  upon  physical  fatigue. — Instances  of  great  in- 
sensibility to  personal  danger.— Drinking  usages  of  the  profession.— Temptation 
overcome.— Organisms  of  the  lias. — Use  of  spent  thunderbolts. — Fossil  wonders 
t>f  the  eathic  lias. — An  important  discovery  not  followed  up.— Journey  into  the 
lighlands,— the  old  shepherd's  vision.— Forest  of  native  Scotch  pine.— A  new 
•cquaiutance.— Moonlit  exhibitions  of  natural  scenery 144 


CHAPTER   IX. 

I  oon  Side.— A  midnight  hour.— Gillie-Christ.— Spectral  appearance  in  the 
Jmrchyard.— The  poor  maniac— Origin  of  the  soul.— Traditionary  stories.— 
highland  character.— The  maniac's  quarrel  with  her  husband.— Something  pe- 
culiarly unwholesome  in  the  society  of  a  strong-minded  maniac— Her  anec- 
dotes of  a  brother.— A  specimen  of  barrack-life.— A  new  school.— Professional 
♦iharacteristics.— Bothy  life  of  the  North-country  masons 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER   X. 

PAOI 

fnttvesting  objects  around  Conon  Side.— The  poetic  mood. — The  accomplishment 
of  verse  distinct  from  the  poetic  faculty.— Stanzas. —  Unio  Jllargaritifcrus,  and 
the  formation  of  pearls. — Bathing  in  the  haunted  pools  of  Conon. — Superstition 
has  her  figures  as  certainly  as  poesy. — The  ruined  chapel  in  the  woods. — A  dark 
rivulet  and  its  trout. — Curious  property  of  Flounders. — Libellula. — Different 
stages  of  the  animal  creation.— Human  contrivances  anticipated  in  both  animal 
and  vegetable  nature.— Jock,  the  story-teller  of  the  barracks. — The  faculty  for 
extemporary  fabrication  a  peculiarity  of  a  rude  society. — Musings. — Verses  to 
the  Conon 186 


CHAPTER  XI. 

The  young  painter's  home.— Symbolism  of  ancient  Celtic  sculpture.—"  Poor  lame 
Danie."— Barrack-life  again.— The  conglomerate  deposits  of  Conon.— Goblin 
of  Craighouse. — Highlanders  of  the  border  districts  inferior  to  those  of  the  in- 
terior.— Superstition  natural  to  a  state  of  failing  health. — Disastrous  effects  of 
the  large  farm  system  on  the  people  of  the  agricultural  districts. — Study  of  the 
old  Scotch  poets. — Alleged  superiority  of  the  old  Greek  and  Roman  writers 
accounted  for 210 


CHAPTER   XII. 

Disastrous  consequences  to  the  mechanic  of  being  an  inferior  workman.— My 
friend  of  the  Doocot  Cave. — A  perilous  adventure. — Ludicrous  expedient  to  fix 
a  boundary-stone.— Click  Clack,  the  Carter.— Unique  features  of  the  metamor- 
phic  system.— Recession  of  the  shore  of  Loch  Maree.— Music  on  the  waters. — 
Island  Maree.— Comforts  of  a  barrack.— Home  of  a  Highlander.— "  Without 
Gaelic  in  Gairloch." — Effect  of  a  potato  famine. — Disparity  among  people  of 
contiguous  districts  due  to  a  mixture  of  races. — Discrepancy  in  the  appearance 
of  the  sex3s  on  ihe  west  coast  of  Scotland.— Gaelic  Thinking  in  Scripture  Eng- 
lish   035 


CONTE  NTS.  XI 


CHAPTER    XIII. 


PAOI 


A  terra  incognita.— Contentment  sometimes  rather  a  vice  than  a  virtue.— A  ge- 
nius.—A  grave  difference  between  porridge  with,  and  porridge  without  milk. 
— Relative  powers  of  fairies  and  ice  to  walk  off  with  great  stones. — Flora  of 
Gairloch. — Law  of  increase  in  the  animal  and  vegetable  world,— the  same  ap- 
plies to  man. — View  of  the  western  islands. — Differences  between  Ihe  produc- 
tions of  the  eastern  and  western  coasts  of  Scotland.— Submarine  scenery.— 
Primitive  arts  of  uncultivated  districts. — Gloomy  prospects  of  the  cotters, — their 
Celtic  blood  not  the  only  cause  of  their  indolence.— A  resurrectionist.— Sabbaths 
in  Flowerdale.— Poverty  of  the  Highlanders 257 


CHAPTER    XIV. 

A  sad  Accident.— Belief  in  a  particular  Providence  natural  to  the  mind.— The 
last  eagle  of  Cromarty  Hill.— The  ancient  records  of  geology  confirmed  by  the 
present  extinction  of  animal  species  on  the  globe.— Resolve  to  seek  my  fortune 
among  the  stone-cutters  of  Edinburgh.— Scenery  of  the  Frith  of  Forth.— Distant 
view  of  the  Scottish  capital. — An  unfortunate  patrimony. — Edinburgh  a  city 
of  the  past  and  present.—"  A  Highlander  newly  come  to  Scotland."— A  culti- 
vated and  fenced  country  less  beloved  by  a  people  than  a  wild,  open  one.— The 
carboniferous  system.— Visions  of  science.— Serfdom  in  the  coal  districts.— 
Collier  women  of  Niddry. — The  democratic  watchword  "Liberty  and  Equality" 
faulty  in  its  phlosophy.— Moral  degradation  in  the  environs  of  Edinburgh.— 
My  lodging 284 


CHAPTER    XV. 

Disaffection  toward  religious  establishments  among  the  working-men  of  Scotland. 
—My  fellow-lodgers.— Irreligion  among  the  masons.— Family  worship  estab- 
lished in  our  cottage. — Habits  of  dissipation  among  the  masons.— The  province 
of  intelligence  in  reforming  the  morals.— The  nobler  virtues  unknown  to  black- 
guards.—Charles  the  hero  of  our  party.— Evil  effect  of  the  practice  of  promis- 
cuous imprisonment.— Intolerance  of  new  sects.— Strike  among  the  masons.— 
Scene  in  a  public  house.— Human  nature  a  difficult  problem. — Evils  of  strikes. 
— The  self-conceit  of  the  young  a  wise  provision. — "  Old  Alie,  the  witch,"  and 
"  Davie,  the  apprentice."— A  city  playhouse 3W 


Xll  CONTENTS 


CHAPTER    XVI. 

PAG« 

A  great  fire  in  Edinburgh.— Special  visitations  of  heaven  difficult  to  be  deter- 
mined.— Dr.  M'Crie. — My  reading  and  Rambles. — Noz  Ambrosiana. — We  un- 
derstand an  author  the  better  for  knowing  how  he  looks. — Quit  Edinburgh  for 
Cromarty.— Superstition  of  sailors.— Stanzas  written  at  sea.— Reflections  on  the 
condition  of  the  lower  classes,— causes  of  their  degradation  on  the  increase. — 
Renewed  acquaintance  with  my  friend  at  Doocot.— Man  had  no  responsible 
predecessor  on  earth.— Intellectual  superiority  of  the  scholar  over  the  work- 
ing-man not  so  great  as  has  been  supposed 333 


CHAPTER   XVII. 

My  religious  impressions,— Powerlessness  of  mere  speculative  theology.— Con- 
vinced that  the  "Word  made  flesh"  is  the  central  object  of  the  Christian  sys- 
tem,— importance  of  this  belief. — Adaptation  of  the  scheme  of  redemption  to 
the  heart  o/  man,— practical  power  of  this  principle.— Teachings  of  geology  on 
the  doctrine  of  the  union  of  two  natures  in  Christ.— Failing  health.— Stanzas. 
— Convalescence . — Sketches  of  a  gipsy  party 357 


CHAPTER  XVIII. 

A  new  branch  of  employment. — Observations  on  the  floras  of  KirkmichaBl, — 
their  bearing  on  the  development  hypothesis — Annus,  the  idiot  of  Nigg. — 
Jock  Gordon,  the  imbecile  of  Cromarty, — their  rivalship,  and  its  issue. — An 
original  theory  of  the  mind. — The  ministers  of  Cromarty.— Meeting  with  Mr. 
Stewart,— our  subsequent  intimacy.— His  manner  of  preaching J78 


CHAPTER    XIX. 

get  out  to  seek  employment  at  Inverness.— Interview  with  the  parish  minister.— 
The  sort  of  patronage  which  letters  of  introduction  procure. — Planning  to  get 
employment. — Both  verse  and  old  English  fail  me.— A  jilted  bridegroom. — 
The  Guars  of  Inverness. — Criticism  on  the  magistrates. — Determine  to  publish 
a  volume  of  poems.— Death  of  my  uncle  James,  and  of  my  friend  William  Ross.  393 


CONTENTS.  Xlll 


CHAPTER    XX. 

PAGE 

Preface  to  my  volume  of  verse.— Write  for  the  Courier  on  the  herring  fishery,— 
extracts. — Reception  of  my  verses  by  the  critics. — A  near  criticism.— A  severe 
attack  from  an  itinerant  elocutionist, — the  lecturer  barely  escapes  a.  drubbing. 
—A  generous  critique  from  Edinburgh.— My  circle  of  friends  become  consider- 
ably enlarged. — Interview  with  Dr.  Baird. — Other  literary  enterprises. — The 
error  of  forsaking  an  honest  calling.— An  interesting  group  of  literary  ladies. 
— Jeu  iTesprit  on  a  young  naval  officer 4 16 


CHAPTER    XXI. 

Land  wastes  of  Culbiu. — Peculiarities  of  the  sub-aerial  formation. — Great  age  of 
the  globe,— the  Scriptures  do  not  fix  its  antiquity.— Tremendous  storm  on  the 
Hill  of  Cromarty,— extraordinary  character  of  the  scene.— Origin  of  Scottish 
mosses. — Molusca  of  the  Shandwick  lias. — Dissection  of  a  loligo. — The  oolitic 
and  lias  deposits.—  3rganism  of  the  second  age  of  vertebrate  existence 437 


CHAPTER   XXII 

The  Baptist  cause  at  Cromarty. — Opposition  to  the  Catholic  Relief  Bill.— Trouble 
in  the  parish, — a  dire  ecclesiastical  dispute. — Approach  of  the  cholera  — Our 
Barrier  Sanitaire  measure. — The  virtues  of  the  smoke  of  sulphur  and  chloride 
tested,— fumigation  of  the  Inverness  politicians. — Ravages  of  the  pestilence. — 
A  time  of  peace  favorable  to  the  growth  of  opinion.— The  Revolution  in  France, 
— reception  of  the  news  by  the  crew  of  a  French  lugger. — Effects  of  the  Reform 
Bill  on  the  politics  of  Cromarty.— Beginning  and  ending  of  my  municipal 
career 4-Vl 


CHAPTER   XXIII. 

Evenings  with  the  ladies.— A  pretty  young  lady  and  "the  Cromarty  poet."— A 
lovely  apparition.— The  propriety  of  conversing  privately  with  an  operative 
mason.— A  dream  maiden  displaced  by  a  real  one.— Thoughts  of  a  home  in  the 


XIV  CONTENTS. 

PA.OB 

backwoods  of  America. — The  business  of  the  newspaper  editor  not  always  au 
independent  one. — A  special  providence,— employed  as  accountant  of  the 
Branch  Bark.  The  ill-condition  of  the  laboring  classes  often  overdrawn.— Voy- 
age to  Edinburgh, — object  of  the  journey. — My  stay  at  Linlithgow.— Organisms 
of  the  mountain  limestone. — Return  to  Cromarty. — Comparative  educational 
advantages  of  the  mechanic  and  the  clerk.— Reception  of  my  traditional  vol- 
ume.— The  bank  proves  an  admirable  school,  suited  to  cultivate  a  shrewd  com- 
mon sense. — My  bridal  excursion. — Cathedral  of  Elgin.— Return  to  Cromarty. 
— Stanzas 475 


CHAPTER  XXIV. 

Contributions  to  the  "  Border  Tales."— The  reward  of"  pains-taking  research."— 
Robert  Chambers  and  his  journal. — Ichthyolitic  deposits  of  the  old  red  sand- 
stone,— these  have  no  representative  among  recent  fishes.— Mr.  DinkePa  alleged 
restoration  of  the  Cephalasprans  disproved.— Cheiracanthus  and  Cheirolepsis. 
—Evening  excursions  to  Moray  Frith.— Triumph  of  the  Liberals  over  Presby- 
terial  bigotry.— An  ability  of  efficient  squabbling  proved  to  be  a  very  market- 
able one.— Memoir  of  William  Forsyth.— A  sad  bereavement.— Stanzas 499 


CHAPTER  XXV. 

The  voluntary  controversy.— My  uncles  become  Seceders.— Sympathy  with  the 
establishment. — Critical  position  of  the  Church, — it  is  defended  in  a  letter  to 
Lord  Brougham,— great  success  of  the  pamphlet.— Story  of  the  "Deserted 
Church." — Become  editor  of  the  Witness, — a  non-intrusion  paper. — Oratory  of 
Dr.  Chalmers,— great  orators  imperfectly  represented  in  their  written  speeches. 
— Anecdotes  of  Dr.  Chalmers. — Brief  history  of  a  friend.— Quit  Cromarty. — Suc- 
cess of  the  Witness. — Reflections  on  the  past d  I? 


MY 


SCHOOLS  AND  SCHOOLMASTERS; 


OR. 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  EDUCATION. 


CHAPTER  I. 


"  Ye  gentlemen  of  England 
Who  live  at  home  at  ease, 

O,  little  do  you  think  upon 
The  dangers  of  the  seas." 

Old  Soi 


Rather  more  than  eighty  years  ago,  a  stout  little  boy,  in  his 
sixth  or  seventh  year,  was  despatched  from  an  old-fashioned 
farm-house  in  the  upper  part  of  the  parish  of  Cromarty,  to 
drown  a  litter  of  puppies  in  an  adjacent  pond.  The  commis- 
sion seemed  to  be  not  in  the  least  congenial.  He  sat  down 
beside  the  pool,  and  began  to  cry  over  his  charge ;  and  finally, 
after  wasting  some  time  in  a  paroxysm  of  indecision  and  sor- 
row, instead  of  committing  the  puppies  to  the  water,  he  tucked 
them  up  in  his  little  kilt,  and  set  out  by  a  blind  pathway 
which  went  winding  through  the  stunted  heath  of  the  dreary 
Maolbuoy  Common,  in  a  direction  opposite  to  that  of  the  farm 
house, — his  home  for  the  two  previous  twelvemonths.  After 
some  doubtful  wandering  on  the  waste,  he  succeeded  in  reach- 
ing, before  nightfall,  the  neighbouring  seaport  town,  and  pre- 
sented himself  laden  with  his  charge,  at  his  mother's  door. 


2  MY  SCHOOLS   AND   SCHOOLMASTERS  ; 

The  poor  woman, — a  sailor's  widow,  in  very  humble  circum- 
stances,— raised  her  hands  in  astonishment  :  "  O,  my  unlucky 
boy,"  she  exclaimed,  "  what's  this  ? — what  brings  you  here  V 
"The  little  doggies,  mither,"  said  the  boy  ;  "I  couldna  drown 
the  little  doggies ;  and  I  took  them  to  you."  What  after- 
wards befell  the  "  little  doggies,"  I  know  not  ;  but  trivial  as 
the  incident  may  seem,  it  exercised  a  marked  influence  on  the 
circumstances  and  destiny  of  at  least  two  generations  of  crea- 
tures higher  in  the  scale  than  themselves.  The  boy,  as  he 
/"stubbornly  refused  to  return  to  the  farm-house,  had  to  be  sent 
on  shipboard,  agreeably  to  his  wish,  as  a  cabin-boy  ;  and  the 
writer  of  these  chapters  was  born,  in  consequence,  a  sailor's 
son,  and  was  rendered,  as  early  as  his  fifth  year,  mainly  de- 
pendent for  his  support  on  the  sedulously  plied  but  indiffer- 
ently remunerated  labors  of  his  only  surviving  parent  at  the 
time,  a  sailor's  widow. 

The  little  boy  of  the  farm-house  was  descended  from  a  long 
line  of  seafaring  men, — skilful  and  adventurous  sailors, — - 
some  of  whom  had  coasted  along  the  Scottish  shores  as  early 
as  the  times  of  Sir  Andrew  Wood  and  the  "  bold  Bartons," 
and  mayhap  helped  to  man  that  "  verrie  monstrous  schippe 
the  Great  Michael,"  that  "  cumbered  all  Scotland  to  get  her  to 
sea,"  They  had  taken  as  naturally  to  the  water  as  the  New- 
foundland dog  or  the  duckling.  That  waste  of  life  which  is 
always  so  great  in  the  naval  profession  had  been  more  than 
usually  so  in  the  generation  just  passed  away.  Of  the  boy's 
two  uncles,  one  had  sailed  around  the  world  with  Anson,  and 
assisted  in  burning  Paita,  and  in  boarding  the  Manilla  gal- 
leon ;  but  on  reaching  the  English  coast  he  mysteriously  dis- 
appeared, and  was  never  more  heard  of.  The  other  uncle,  a 
remarkably  handsome  and  powerful  man, — or,  to  borrow  the 
homely  but  not  inexpressive  language  in  which  I  have  heard 
him  described,  "  as  pretty  a  fellow  as  ever  stepped  in  shoe- 
leather," — perished  at  sea  in  a  storm  ;  and  several  years  after, 
the  boy's  father,  when  entering  the  Frith  of  Cromarty,  was 
struck  overboard,  during  a  sudden  gust,  by  the  boom  of  his 
vessel,  and,  apparently  stunned  by  the  blow,  never  rose  again. 


Shortly  after,  in  the  hope  of  securing  her  son  from  what 
seemed  to  be  the  hereditary  fate,  his  mother  had  committed 
the  boy  to  the  charge  of  a  sister,  married  to  a  farmer  of  the 
parish,  and  now  the  mistress  of  the  farm-house  of  Ardavell  ; 
but  the  family  death  was  not  to  be  so  avoided  ;  and  the  ar- 
rangement terminated,  as  has  been  seen,  in  the  transaction 
beside  the  pond. 

In  course  of  time  the  sailor  boy,  despite  of  hardship  and 
rough  usage,  grew  up  into  a  singularly  robust  and  active  man  ; 
not  above  the  middle  size. — for  his  height  never  exceeded 
five  feet  eight  inches, — but  broad-shouldered,  deep-chested, 
strong-limbed,  and  so  compact  of  bone  and  muscle,  that  in  a 
ship  of  the  line,  in  which  he  afterwards  sailed,  there  was  not, 
among  five  hundred  able-bodied  seamen,  a  man  who  could  lift 
so  great  a  weight,  or  grapple  with  him  on  equal  terms.  His 
education  had  been  but  indifferently  cared  for  at  home ;  he 
had,  however,  been  taught  to  read  by  a  female  cousin,  a  niece 
of  his  mother's,  who,  like  her  too,  was  both  the  daughter  and 
the  widow  of  a  sailor  ;  and  for  his  cousin's  only  child,  a  girl 
somewhat  younger  than  himself,  he  had  contracted  a  boyish 
affection,  which  in  a  stronger  form  continued  to  retain  possess- 
ion of  him  after  he  grew  up.  In  the  leisure  thrown  on  his 
hands  in  long  Indian  and  Chinese  voyages,  he  learned  to  write ; 
and  profited  so  much  by  the  instruction  of  a  comrade,  an  in- 
telligent and  warm-hearted  though  reckless  Irishman,  that 
he  became  skilful  enough  to  keep  a  log-book,  and  to  take  a 
reckoning  with  the  necessary  correctness, — accomplishments 
far  from  common  at  the  time  among  ordinary  sailors.  He 
formed,  too,  a  taste  for  reading.  The  recollection  of  his 
cousin's  daughter  may  have  influenced  him,  but  he  commenced 
life  with  a  determination  to  rise  in  it, — made  his  first  money 
by  storing  up  instead  of  drinking  his  grog, — and,  as  was  com- 
mon in  those  times,  drove  a  little  trade  with  the  natives  of 
foreign  parts,  in  articles  of  curiosity  and  vcrtu,  for  which,  I  sus- 
pect, the  custom-house  dues  were  not  always  paid.  With  all 
his  Scotch  prudence,  however,  and  with  much  kindliness  of 
heart  and  placidity  of  temper,  there  was  some  wild  blood  in  his 


4  MY  SCHOOLS  AND  SCHOOLMASTEKS ; 

veins,  derived,  mayhap,  from  one  or  two  buccaneering  ances 
tors,  that,  when  excited  beyond  the  endurance  point,  became 
sufficiently  formidable ;  and  which,  on  at  least  one  occasion, 
interfered  very  considerably  with  his  plans  and  prospects. 

On  a  protracted  and  tedious  voyage  in  a  large  East  India- 
man,  he  had,  with  the  rest  of  the  crew,  been  subjected  to 
harsh  usage  by  a  stern,  capricious  captain  ;  but,  secure  of  re- 
lief on  reaching  port,  he  had  borne  uncomplainingly  with  it 
all.  His  comrade  and  quondam  teacher  the  Irishman  was, 
however,  less  patient ;  and  for  remonstrating  with  the  tyrant, 
as  one  of  a  deputation  of  the  seamen,  in  what  was  deemed  a 
mutinous  spirit,  he  was  laid  hold  of,  and  was  in  the  course  of 
being  bound  down  to  the  deck  under  a  tropical  sun,  when  his 
quieter  comrade,  with  his  blood  now  heated  to  the  boiling 
point,  stepped  aft,  and  with  apparent  calmness  re-stated  the 
grievance.  The  captain  drew  a  loaded  pistol  from  his  belt ; 
the  sailor  struck  up  his  hand ;  and,  as  the  bullet  whistled 
through  the  rigging  above,  he  grappled  with  him,  and  dis- 
armed him  in  a  trice.  The  crew  rose,  and  in  a  few  minutes 
the  ship  was  all  their  own.  But  having  failed  to  calculate  on 
such  a  result,  they  knew  not  what  to  do  with  their  charge  ; 
and,  acting  under  the  advice  of  their  new  leader,  who  felt  to 
the  full  the  embarrassing  nature  of  the  position,  they  were  con- 
tent simply  to  demand  the  redress  of  their  grievances  as  their 
terms  of  surrender  ;  when,  untowardly  for  their  claims,  a  ship 
of  war  hove  in  sight,  much  in  want  of  men,  and,  bearing  down 
on  the  Indiaman,  the  mutiny  was  at  once  suppressed,  and  the 
leading  mutineers  sent  aboard  the  armed  vessel,  accompanied 
by  a  grave  charge,  and  the  worst  possible  of  characters.  Lucki- 
ly for  them,  however,  and  especially  luckily  for  the  Irishman 
and  his  friend,  the  war-ship  was  so  weakened  by  scurvy,  at 
that  time  the  untamed  pest  of  the  navy,  that  scarce  two  dozen 
of  her  crew  could  do  duty  aloft.  A  fierce  tropical  tempest, 
too,  which  broke  out  not  long  after,  pleaded  powerfully  in 
their  favor ;  and  the  affair  terminated  in  the  ultimate  pro- 
motion of  the  Irishman  to  the  office  of  ship-schoolmaster,  and 
of  his  Scotch  comrade  to  the  captaincy  of  the  foretop. 


My  narrative  abides  with  the  latter.  He  remained  for  seve- 
ral years  aboard  men-of-war,  and,  though  not  much  in  love 
with  the  service,  did  his  duty  in  both  storm  and  battle.  He 
served  in  the  action  off  the  Dogger-Bank, — one  of  the  last 
naval  engagements  fought  ere  the  manoeuvre  of  breaking  the 
line  gave  to  British  valor  its  due  superiority,  by  rendering 
all  our  great  sea-battles  decisive;  and  a  comrade  who  sail- 
ed in  the  same  vessel,  and  from  whom,  when  a  boy,  I  have  re- 
ceived kindness  for  my  father's  sake,  has  told  me  that,  their 
ship  being  but  indifferently  manned  at  the  time,  and  the  ex- 
traordinary personal  strength  and  activity  of  his  friend  well 
known,  he  had  a  station  assigned  him  at  his  gun  against  two 
of  the  crew,  and  that  during  the  action  he  actually  outwrought 
them  both.  At  length,  however,  the  enemy  drifted  to  leeward 
to  refit  ;  and  when  set  to  repair  the  gashed  and  severed  rig- 
ging, such  was  his  state  of  exhaustion,  in  consequence  of  the 
previous  overstrain  on  every  nerve  and  muscle,  that  he  had 
scarce  vigor  enough  left  to  raise  the  marlinspike  employed 
in  the  work  to  the  level  of  his  face.  Suddenly,  when  in  this 
condition,  a  signal  passed  along  the  line,  that  the  Dutch  fleet, 
already  refitted,  was  bearing  down  to  renew  the  engagement. 
A  thrill  like  that  of  an  electric  shock  passed  through  the  frame 
of  the  exhausted  sailor  ;  his  fatigue  at  once  left  him  ;  and,  vig- 
orous and  strong  as  when  the  action  first  began,  he  found 
himself  able,  as  before,  to  run  out  against  his  two  comrades 
the  one  side  of  a  four-and-twenty  pounder.  The  instance  is 
a  curious  one  of  the  influence  of  that  "  spirit"  which,  accord- 
ing to  the  Wise  King,  enables  a  man  to  "  sustain  his  infir- 
mity." 

It  may  be  well  not  to  inquire  too  curiously  regarding  the 
mode  in  which  this  effective  sailor  quitted  the  navy.  The 
country  had  borrowed  his  services  without  consulting  his  will ; 
and  he,  I  suspect,  reclaimed  them  on  his  own  behalf  without 
first  asking  leave.  I  have  been  told  by  my  mother  that  he 
found  the  navy  very  intolerable ;  the  mutiny  at  the  Nore  had 
not  yet  meliorated  the  service  to  the  common  sailor.  Among 
other  hardships,  he  had  been  oftener  than  once  under  not  only 


6  MY  SCHOOLS  AND  SCHOOLMASTERS; 

very  harsh,  but  also  very  incompetent  officers ;  and  on  one 
occasion,  after  toiling  on  the  fore-yard  in  a  violent  night-squall, 
with  some  of  the  best  seamen  aboard,  in  fruitless  attempts  to 
furl  up  the  sail,  he  had  to  descend,  cap  in  hand,  at  the  risk  of 
a  flogging,  and  humbly  implore  the  boy-lieutenant  in  charge 
that  he  should  order  the  vessel's  head  to  be  laid  in  a  certain 
direction.  Luckily  for  him,  the  advice  was  taken  by  the 
young  gentlemen,  and  in  a  few  minutes  the  sail  was  furled. 
He  left  his  ship  one  fine  morning,  attired  in  his  best,  and  hav- 
ing on  his  head  a  three-cornered  hat,  with  tufts  of  lace  at  the 
corners,  which  I  well  remember,  from  the  circumstance  that 
it  had  long  after  to  perform  an  important  part  in  certain  boy- 
ish masquerades  at  Christmas  and  the  New  Year ;  and  as  he 
had  taken  effective  precautions  for  being  reported  missing  in 
the  evening,  he  got  clear  off. 

Of  some  of  the  after-events  of  his  life,  I  retain  such  mere 
fragmentary  recollections,  dissociated  from  date  and  locality, 
as  might  be  most  readily  seized  on  by  the  imagination  of  a 
child.  At  one  time,  when  engaged  in  one  of  his  Indian  voy- 
ages, he  was  stationed  during  the  night,  accompanied  by  but 
a  single  comrade,  in  a  small  open  boat,  near  one  of  the  minor 
mouths  of  the  Ganges  ;  and  he  had  just  fallen  asleep  on  the 
beams,  when  he  was  suddenly  awakened  by  a  violent  motion, 
as  if  his  skiff  were  capsizing.  Starting  up,  he  saw  in  the  im- 
perfect light,  a  huge  tiger,  that  had  swam,  apparently,  from  the 
neighboring  jungle,  in  the  act  of  boarding  the  boat.  So  much 
was  he  taken  aback,  that  though  a  loaded  musket  lay  beside 
him,  it  was  one  of  the  loose  beams,  or  foot-spars,  used  as  ful- 
crums  for  the  feet  in  rowing,  that  he  laid  hold  of  as  a  weapon  ; 
but  such  was  the  blow  he  dealt  to  the  paws  of  the  creature,  as 
they  rested  on  the  gunwale,  that  it  dropped  off  with  a  tremen 
dous  snarl,  and  he  saw  it  no  more.  On  another  occasion,  Ik 
was  one  of  three  men  sent  with  despatches  to  some  Indian  port 
in  a  boat,  which,  oversetting  in  the  open  sea  in  a  squall,  left 
them  for  the  greater  part  of  three  days  only  its  upturned  bot- 
tom for  their  resting-place.  And  so  thickly,  during  that  time, 
did  the  sharks  congregate  around  them,  that  though  a  keg  of 


OR,    THE    STOEY   OF   MY   EDUCATION.  7 

rum.  part  of  the  boat's  stores,  floated  for  the  first  two  days 
within  a  few  yards  of  them,  and  they  had  neither  meat  nor 
drink,  none  of  them,  though  they  all  swam  well,  dared  attempt 
regaining  it.  They  were  at  length  relieved  by  a  Spanish 
vessel,  and  treated  with  such  kindness,  that  the  subject  of  my 
narrative  used  ever  after  to  speak  well  of  the  Spaniards,  as  a 
generous  people,  destined  ultimately  to  rise.  He  was  at  one 
time  so  reduced  by  scurvy,  in  a  vessel  half  of  whose  crew  had 
been  carried  off  by  the  disease,  that,  though  still  able  to  do 
duty  on  the  tops,  the  pressure  of  his  finger  left  for  several 
seconds  a  dent  in  his  thigh,  as  if  the  muscular  flesh  had  become 
of  the  consistency  of  dough.  At  another  time,  when  over- 
taken in  a  small  vessel  by  a  protracted  tempest,  in  which  "  for 
many  days  neither  sun  nor  moon  appeared,"  he  continued  to 
retain  his  hold  of  the  helm  for  twelve  hours  after  every  other 
man  aboard  was  utterly  prostrated  and  down,  and  succeeded, 
in  consequence,  in  weathering  the  storm  for  them  all.  And 
after  his  death,  a  nephew  of  my  mother's,  a  young  man  who 
had  served  his  apprenticeship  under  him,  was  treated  with 
great  kindness  on  the  Spanish  Main,  for  his  sake,  by  a  West 
Indian  captain,  whose  ship  and  crew  he  had  saved,  as  the 
captain  told  the  lad,  by  boarding  them  in  a  storm,  at  immi- 
nent risk  to  himself,  and  working  their  vessel  into  port,  when, 
in  circumstances  of  similar  exhaustion,  they  were  drifting  full 
upon  an  iron-bound  shore.  Many  of  my  other  recollections  of 
this  manly  sailor  are  equally  fragmentary  in  their  character ; 
but  there  is  a  distinct  bit  of  picture  in  them  all,  that  strongly 
impressed  the  boyish  fancy. 

When  not  much  turned  of  thirty,  the  sailor  returned  to  nis 
native  town,  with  money  enough,  hardly  earned  and  carefully 
kept,  to  buy  a  fine,  large  sloop,  with  which  he  engaged  in  the 
coasting  trade ;  and  shortly  after  he  married  his  cousin's  daugh- 
ter. He  found  his  cousin,  who  had  supported  herself  in  her 
widowhood  by  teaching  school,  residing  in  a  clingy,  old 
fashioned  house,  three  rooms  in  length,  but  with  the  windows 
of  its  second  story  half-buried  in  the  eaves,  that  had  been 
J  eft  her  by  their  mutual  grandfather,  old  John  Feddes,  one  of 


8 

the  last  of  the  buccaneers.  It  had  been  built,  I  have  every 
reason  to  believe,  with  Spanish  gold ;  not,  however,  with  a 
great  deal  of  it,  for,  notwithstanding  its  six  rooms,  it  was  a 
rather  humble  erection,  and  had  now  fallen  greatly  into  dis- 
repair. It  was  fitted  up,  however,  with  some  of  the  sailor's 
money,  and  after  his  marriage,  became  his  home — a  home 
rendered  all  the  happier  by  the  presence  of  his  cousin,  now 
rising  in  years,  and  who,  during  her  long  widowhood,  had 
sought  and  found  consolations  amid  her  troubles  and  priva- 
tions, where  it  was  surest  to  be  found.  She  was  a  meek- 
spirited,  sincerely  pious  woman,  and  the  sailor  during  his  more 
distant  voyages — for  he  sometimes  traded  with  ports  of  the 
Baltic  on  the  one  hand,  and  with  those  of  Ireland  and  the 
south  of  England  on  the  other — had  the  comfort  of  knowing 
that  his  wife,  who  had  fallen  into  a  state  of  health  chronically 
delicate,  was  sedulously  tended  and  cared  for  by  a  devoted 
mother.  The  happiness  which  he  would  have  otherwise  en- 
joyed was,  however,  marred  in  some  degree  by  his  wife's 
great  delicacy  of  constitution,  and  ultimately  blighted  by  two 
unhappy  accidents. 

He  had  not  lost  the  nature  which  had  been  evinced  at  an 
early  age  beside  the  pond  :  for  a  man  who  had  often  looked 
death  in  the  face,  he  had  remained  nicely  tender  of  human  life, 
and  had  often  hazarded  his  own  in  preserving  that  of  others  ; 
and  when  accompanied,  on  one  occasion,  by  his  wife  and  her 
mother  to  his  vessel,  just  previous  to  sailing,  he  had  unfortu- 
nately to  exert  himself  in  her  presence,  in  behalf  of  one  of  his 
seamen,  in  a  way  that  gave  her  constitution  a  shock  from  whieh 
it  never  recovered.  A  clear,  frosty,  moonlight  evening  had. 
set  in ;  the  pier-head  was  glistening  with  new-formed  ice,  and 
one  of  the  sailors,  when  engaged  in  casting  over  a  haulser 
which  he  had  just  loosed,  missed  footing  on  the  treacherous 
margin,  and  fell  into  the  sea.  The  master  knew  his  man 
could  not  swim  ;  a  powerful  seaward  tide  sweeps  past  the  place 
with  the  first  hours  of  ebb ;  there  was  not  a  moment  to  be 
Jost ;  and,  hastily  throwing  off  his  heavy  great-coat,  he  plunged 
after  him,  and  in  an  instant  the  strong  current  swept  them  both 


ort  of  sight.  He  succeeded,  however,  in  laying  hold  of  the 
half-drowned  man,  and  striking  with  him  from  out  the  peril- 
ous tide-way  into  an  eddy,  with  a  Herculean  effort  he  regained 
the  quay.  On  reaching  it,  however,  his  wife  lay  insensible  in 
the  arms  of  her  mother  ;  and  as  she  was  at  the  time  in  the  de- 
licate condition  incidental  to  married  women,  the  natural  con- 
sequence followed,  and  she  never  recovered  the  shock,  but  lin- 
gered for  more  than  a  twelvemonth,  the  mere  shadow  of  hei 
former  self;  when  a  second  event,  as  untoward  as  the  first,  too 
violently  shook  the  fast-ebbing  sands,  and  precipitated  her  dis- 
solution. 

A  prolonged  tempest  from  the  stormy  north-east,  had  swept 
the  Moray  Frith  of  its  shipping,  and  congregated  the  storm- 
bound vessels  by  scores  in  the  noble  harbor  of  Cromarty, 
when  the  wind  chopped  suddenly  round,  and  they  all  set  out 
to  sea,  the  sloop  of  the  master  among  the  rest.  The  other 
vessels  kept  the  open  Frith ;  but  the  master,  thoroughly  ac- 
quainted with  its  navigation,  and  in  the  belief  that  the  change 
of  wind  was  but  temporary,  went  on  hugging  the  land  on  the 
weather  side,  till,  as  he  had  anticipated,  the  breeze  set  full  into 
the  old  quarter,  and  increased  into  a  gale.  And  then,  when 
all  the  rest  of  the  fleet  had  no  other  choice  left  them  than  just 
to  scud  back  again,  he  struck  out  into  the  Frith  in  a  long  tack, 
and,  doubling  Kinnaird's  Head  and  the  dreaded  Buchan  Ness, 
succeeded  in  making  good  his  voyage  south.  Next  morning, 
the  wind-bound  vessels  were  crowding  the  harbor  of  refuge 
as  before,  and  only  his  sloop  was  missing.  The  first  war  of 
the  French  Revolution  had  broken  out  at  the  time  ;  it  was 
known  there  were  several  French  privateers  hovering  on  the 
coast,  and  the  report  went  abroad  that  the  missing  sloop  had 
been  captured  by  the  French.  There  was  a  weather-brained 
tailor  in  the  neighborhood,  who  used  to  do  very  odd  tilings, 
especially,  it  was  said,  when  the  moon  was  at  the  full,  and 
whom  the  wrriter  remembers  from  the  circumstance  that  he 
fabricated  for  him  his  first  jacket,  and  that,  though  he  suc- 
ceeded in  sewing  on  one  sleeve  to  the  hole  at  the  shoulder, 
where  it  3ught  to  be,  he  committed  the  slight  mistake  of  sew- 


10  MY   SCHOOLS   AND   SCHOOLMASTERS; 

ing  on  the  other  sleeve  to  one  of  the  pocket  holes.  Poor  An 
drew  Fern  had  heard  that  his  townsman's  sloop  had  been  cap- 
tured by  a  privateer,  and  fidgety  with  impatience  till  he  had 
communicated  the  intelligence  where  he  thought  it  would  tell 
most  effectively,  he  called  on  the  master's  wife,  to  ask  whether 
she  had  not  heard  that  all  the  wind-bound  vessels  had  got  back 
again  save  the  master's,  and  to  wonder  no  one  had  yet  told 
her  that  if  his  had  not  got  back,  it  was  simply  because  it  had 
been  taken  by  the  French.     The  tailor's  communication  told 

x  more  powerfully  than  he  could  have  anticipated  :  in  less  than 
a  week  after,  the  master's  wife  was  dead ;  and  long  ere  her 
husband's  return,  she  was  lying  in  the  quiet  family  burying- 
place,  in  which — so  heavy  were  the  drafts  made  by  accident 
and  violent  death  on  the  family — the  remains  of  none  of  the  male 
members  had  been  deposited  for  more  than  a  hundred  years. 
The  mother,  now  left,  by  the  death  of  her  daughter,  to  a 
dreary  solitude,  sought  to  relieve  its  tedium,  during  the  ab- 
sence of  her  son-in-law  when  on  his  frequent  voyages,  by  keep- 
ing, as  she  had  done  ere  his  return  from  foreign  parts,  an  hum- 
ble school.  It  was  attended  by  two  little  girls,  the  children  of 
a  distant  relation  but  very  dear  friend,  the  wife  of  a  tradesman 

\of  the  place — a  woman,  like  herself,  of  sincere  though  unpre- 
tending piety.  Their  similarity  of  character  in  this  respect 
could  hardly  be  traced  to  their  common  ancestor.  He  was 
the  last  curate  of  the  neighboring  parish  of  Nigg ;  and,  though 
not  one  of  those  intolerant  Episcopalian  ministers  that  succeed- 
ed in  rendering  their  church  thoroughly  hateful  to  the  Scot- 
tish people — for  he  was  a  simple,  easy  man,  of  much  good  na- 
ture— he  was,  if  tradition  speaks  true,  as  little  religious  as  any 
of  them.  In  one  of  the  earlier  replies  to  that  curious  work, 
"  Scotch  Presbyterian  Eloquence  Displayed,"  I  find  a  nonsen- 
sical passage  from  one  of  the  curate's  sermons,  given  as  a  set- 
off  against  the  Presbyterian  nonsense  adduced  by  the  other 
side.  "  Mr.  James  M'Kenzie,  curate  of  Nigg  in  Ross,"  says 
the  writer,  "  describing  eternity  to  his  parishioners,  told  them 
that  in  that  state  they  would  be  immortalized,  so  that  nothing 
could  hurt  them  ;  a  slash  of  a  broad  sword  could  not  hurt  you, 


11 

saith  he ;  nay,  a  cannon-ball  would  play  but  baff  on  you." 
Most  of  the  curate's  descendants  were  staunch  Presbyterians, 
and  animated  by  a  greatly  stronger  spirit  than  his ;  and  there 
were  none  of  them  stauncher  in  their  Presbyterianism  than 
the  two  elderly  women  who  counted  kin  from  him  in  the 
fourth  degree,  and  who,  on  the  basis  of  a  common  faith,  had 
become  attached  friends.  The  little  girls  were  great  favorites 
with  the  schoolmistress  ;  and  when,  as  she  rose  in  years,  her 
health  began  to  fail,  the  elder  of  the  two  removed  from  her 
mother's  house,  to  live  with  and  take  care  of  her ;  and  the 
younger,  who  was  now  shooting  up  into  a  pretty  young  woman, 
used,  as  before,  to  pass  much  of  her  time  with  her  sister  and 
her  old  mistress. 

Meanwhile  the  shipmaster  was  thriving.  He  purchased  a 
site  for  a  house  beside  that  of  his  buccaneering  grandfather, 
and  built  for  himself  and  his  aged  relative  a  respectable  dwell- 
ing, which  cost  him  about  four  hundred  pounds,  and  entitled 
his  son,  the  writer,  to  exercise  the  franchise,  on  the  passing, 
considerably  more  than  thirty  years  after,  of  the  Reform  Bill. 
The  new  house  was,  however,  never  to  be  inhabited  by  its 
builder ;  for,  ere  it  was  fully  finished,  he  was  overtaken  by 
a  sad  calamity,  that,  to  a  man  of  less  energy  and  determina- 
tion, would  have  been  ruin,  and  in  consequence  of  which  he 
had  to  content  himself  with  the  old  house  as  before,  and  al- 
most to  begin  the  world  anew.  I  have  now  reached  a  point  in 
my  narrative  at  which,  from  my  connection  with  the  two  little 
girls, — both  of  whom  still  live  in  the  somewhat  altered 
character  of  women  far  advanced  in  life, — I  can  be  as  minute 
in  its  details  as  I  please  ;  and  the  details  of  the  misadventure 
which  stripped  the  shipmaster  of  the  earnings  of  long  years 
of  carefulness  and  toil,  blended  as  they  are  with  what  an  old 
critic  might  term  a  curious  machinery  of  the  supernatural, 
seem  not  unworthy  of  being  given  unabridged. 

Early  in  November  1797,  two  vessels — the  one  a  smack 
in  the  London  and  Inverness  trade,  the  other  the  master's 
square-rigged  sloop — lay  wind-bound  for  a  few  days  on  their 
passage  north,  in  the  port  of  Peterhead.     The  weather,  which 


12 

had  been  stormy  and  unsettled,  moderated  toward  the  even- 
ing of  the  fifth  day  of  their  detention ;  and  the  wind  chop- 
ping suddenly  into  the  east,  both  vessels  loosed  from  their 
moorings,  and,  as  a  rather  gloomy  day  was  passing  into  * 
still  gloomier  night,  they  bore  out  to  sea.  The  breeze  soon 
freshened  into  a  gale ;  the  gale  swelled  into  a  hurricane, 
accompanied  by  a  thick  snow-storm  ;  and  when,  early  next 
morning,  the  smack  opened  the  Frith,  she  was  staggering  un 
ler  her  storm-jib,  and  a  main-sail  reefed  to  the  cross.  What 
ver  wind  may  blow,  there  is  always  shelter  within  the  Su 
tors;  and  she  was  soon  riding  at  anchor  within  the  road- 
stead ;  but  she  had  entered  the  bay  alone ;  and  when  day 
broke,  and  for  a  brief,  interval  the  driving  snow-rack  cleared 
up  toward  the  east,  no  second  sail  appeared  in  the  offing. 
"  Poor  Miller  !"  exclaimed  the  master  of  the  smack  ;  "  if  he 
does  not  enter  the  Frith  ere  an  hour,  he  will  never  enter  it  at 
all.  Good  sound  vessel,  and  better  sailor  never  stepped  be- 
tween stem  and  stern  ;  but  last  night  has,  I  fear,  been  too 
much  for  him.  He  should  have  been  here  long  ere  now." 
The  hour  passed  ;  the  day  itself  wore  heavily  away  in  gloom 
and  tempest ;  and  as  not  only  the  master,  but  also  all  the  crew 
of  the  sloop,  were  natives  of  the  place,  groupes  of  the  town's 
folks  might  be  seen,  so  long  as  the  daylight  lasted,  looking 
out  into  the  storm  from  the  salient  points  of  the  old  coast-line 
that,  rising  immediately  behind  the  houses,  commands  the 
Frith.  But  the  sloop  came  not,  and  before  they  had  retired  to 
their  homes,  a  second  night  had  fallen,  dark  and  tempestuous 
us  the  first. 

Ere  morning  the  weather  moderated  ;  a  keen  frost  bound 
up  the  wind  in  its  icy  fetters ;  and  during  the  following  day, 
though  a  heavy  swell  continued  to  roll  shorewards  between 
the  Sutors,  and  to  send  up  its  white  foam  high  against  the 
cliffs,  the  surface  of  the  sea  had  become  glassy  and  smooth. 
But  the  day  wore  on  and  evening  again  fell ;  and  even  the  . 
most  sanguine  relinquished  all  hope  of  ever  again  seeing  the 
sloop  or  her  crew.  There  was  grief  in  the  master's  dwelling, 
■ — grief  in  no  degree  the  less  poignant  from  the  circumstance 


13 

that  it  was  the  tearless,  uncomplaining  grief  of  rigid  old  age. 
Her  two  youthful  friends  and  their  mother  watched  with  the 
widow,  now,  as  it  seemed,  left  alone  in  the  world.  The  town- 
clock  had  struck  the  hour  of  midnight,  and  still  she  remained 
as  if  fixed  to  her  seat,  absorbed  in  silent,  stupefying  sorrow, 
when  a  heavy  foot  was  heard  pacing  along  the  now  silent  street. 
It  passed,  and  anon  returned  ;  ceased  for  a  moment  nearly  op. 
posit e  the  window  ;  then  approached  the  door,  where  there 
vis  a  second  pause  ;  and  then  there  succeeded  a  faltering 
knock,  that  struck  on  the  very  hearts  of  the  inmates  within. 
One  of  the  girls  sprang  up,  and  on  undoing  the  bolt,  shrieked 
out,  as  the  door  fell  open,  "  O,  mistress,  here  is  Jack  Grant  the 
mate  !"  Jack,  a  tall,  powerful  seaman,  but  apparently  in  a 
state  of  utter  exhaustion,  staggered,  rather  than  walked  in, 
and  flung  himself  into  a  chair.  "  Jack,"  exclaimed  the  old 
woman,  seizing  him  convulsively  by  both  his  hands,  "  where's 
my  cousin  ? — where's  Hugh  ?"  "  The  master's  safe  and  well," 
said  Jack  ;  "  but  the  poor  Friendship  lies  in  spales  on  the  bar 
of  Findhorn."  "  God  be  praised  !"  ejaculated  the  widow. 
"  Let  the  gear  go  !" 

I  have  often  heard  Jack's  story  related  in  Jack's  own  words, 
at  a  period  of  life  when  repetition  never  tires  ;  but  I  am  not 
sure  that  I  can  do  it  the  necessary  justice  now.  "  We  left, 
Peterhead,"  he  said,  "with  about  half  a  cargo  of  coal ;  for  we 
had  lightened  ship  a  day  or  two  before ;  and  the  gale  freshen- 
ed as  the  night  came  on.  We  made  all  tight,  however  ;  and 
though  the  snow-drift  was  so  blinding  in  the  thick  of  the  show- 
er that  I  could  scarce  see  my  hand  before  me,  and  though  it 
soon  began  to  blow  great  guns,  we  had  given  the  land  a  good 
offing,  and  the  hurricane  blew  the  right  way.  Just  as  we  were 
loosening  from  the  quay,  a  poor  young  woman,  much  knocked 
up,  with  a  child  in  her  arms,  had  come  to  the  vessel's  side, 
and  begged  hard  of  the  master  to  take  her  aboard.  She  was 
a  soldier's  wife,  and  was  travelling  to  join  her  husband  at  Fort- 
George  ;  but  she  was  already  worn  out  and  penniless,  she  said ; 
and  now,  as  a  snow-storm  threatened  to  block  up  the  roads, 
she  could  neither  stay  where  she  was  nor  pursue  her  journey. 


14  MY   SCHOOLS   AND    SCHOOLMASTERS; 

Her  infant,  too, — she  was  sure,  if  she  tried  to  force  her  way 
through  the  hills,  it  would  perish  in  the  snow.  The  master, 
though  unwilling  to  cumber  us  with  a  passenger  in  such  weath- 
er, was  induced,  out  of  pity  for  the  poor  destitute  creature, 
to  take  her  aboard.  And  she  was  now,  with  her  child,  all 
alone,  below  in  the  cabin.  I  was  stationed  a-head  on  the  out- 
look beside  the  foresail  horse  ;  the  night  had  grown  pitch  dark  ; 
and  the  lamp  in  the  binnacle  threw  just  light  enough  through 
the  gray  of  the  shower  to  show  me  the  master  at  the  helm. 
He  looked  more  anxious,  I  thought,  than  I  had  almost  ever 
seen  him  before,  though  I  have  been  with  him,  mistress,  in 
very  bad  weather;  and  all  at  once  I  saw  he  had  got  company, 
and  strange  company  too,  for  such  a  night ;  there  was  a  woman 
moving  round  him,  with  a  child  in  her  arms.  I  could  see  her 
as  distinctly  as  I  ever  saw  anything, — now  on  the  one  side, 
now  on  the  other, — at  one  time  full  in  the  light,  at  another 
half  lost  in  the  darkness.  That,  I  said  to  myself,  must  be  the 
soldier's  wife  and  her  child  ;  but  how  in  the  name  of  wonder 
can  the  master  allow  a  woman  to  come  on  deck  in  such  a  night 
as  this,  when  we  ourselves  have  just  enough  ado  to  keep  foot- 
ing !  He  takes  no  notice  of  her  neither,  but  keeps  looking 
on,  quite  in  his  wont,  at  the  binnacle.  '  Master,'  I  said,  step- 
ping up  to  him,  '  the  woman  had  surely  better  go  below.' 
'  What  woman,  Jack  V  said  he  ;  '  our  passenger,  you  may  be 
sure,  is  nowhere  else.'  I  looked  round,  mistress,  and  found 
he  was  quite  alone,  and  that  the  companion-head  was  hasped 
down.  There  came  a  cold  sweat  all  over  me.  '  Jack,'  said 
Ihe  master, '  the  night  is  getting  worse,  and  the  roll  of  the 
waves  heightening  every  moment.  I'm  convinced,  too,  our 
cargo  is  shifting.  As  the  last  sea  struck  us,  I  could  hear  the 
coals  rattle  below  ;  and  see  how  stiffly  we  heel  to  the  larboard. 
Say  nothing,  however,  to  the  men,  but  have  all  your  wits  about 
you ;  and  look,  meanwhile,  to  the  boat-tackle  and  the  oars.  I 
have  seen  a  boat  live  in  as  bad  a  night  as  this.'  As  he  spoke, 
a  blue  light  from  above  glimmered  on  the  deck.  We  looked 
up,  and  saw  a  dead-fire  sticking  to  the  cross-trees.  '  It's  all 
over  with  us  now,  master,'  said  I.     '  Nay,  man,'  replied  the 


15 

master,  ii  his  easy,  humorous  way,  which  I  always  like  well 
enough  except  in  bad  weather,  and  then  I  see  his  humor  is 
served  out  like  his  extra  grog,  to  keep  up  hearts  that  have 
cause  enough  to  get  low, — '  Nay,  man,'  he  said,  '  we  can't  af- 
ford to  let  your  grandmother  board  us  to-night.  If  you  will 
ensure  me  against  the  shifting  coal,  I'll  be  your  guarantee 
against  the  dead-light.  Why,  it's  as  much  a  natural  appear- 
ance man,  as  a  flash  of  lightning.  Away  to  your  berth,  and 
keep  up  a  good  heart ;  we  can't  be  far  from  Covesea  now, 
where,  when  once  past  the  Skerries,  the  swell  will  take  off ; 
and  then,  in  two  short  hours,  we  may  be  snug  within  the  Su- 
tors.'  I  had  scarcely  reached  my  berth  a-head,  mistress,  when 
a  heavy  sea  struck  us  on  the  starboard  quarter,  almost  throw- 
ing us  on  our  beam-ends.  I  could  hear  the  rushing  of  the 
coals  below,  as  they  settled  on  the  larboard  side ;  and  though 
the  master  set  us  full  before  the  wind,  and  gave  instant  orders 
to  lighten  every  stitch  of  sail, — and  it  was  but  little  sail  we  had 
at  the  time  to  lighten, — still  the  vessel  did  not  rise,  but  lay  un- 
manageable as  a  log,  with  her  gunwale  in  the  water.  On  we 
drifted,  however,  along  the  south  coast,  with  little  expectation 
save  that  every  other  sea  would  send  us  to  the  bottom  ;  until, 
in  the  first  gray  of  the  morning,  we  found  ourselves  among  the 
breakers  of  the  terrible  bar  of  Findhorn.  And  shortly  after, 
the  poor  Friendship  took  the  ground  right  on  the  edge  of  the 
quicksands,  for  she  would  neither  stay  nor  wear ;  and  as  she 
beat  hard  against  the  bottom,  the  surf  came  rolling  over  half- 
mast  high. 

"  Just  as  we  struck,"  continued  Jack,  "  the  master  made  a 
desperate  effort  to  get  into  the  cabin.  The  vessel  couldn't 
miss,  we  saw,  to  break  up  and  fill ;  and  though  there  was  little 
hope  of  any  of  us  ever  setting  foot  ashore,  he  wished  to  give 
the  poor  woman  below  a  chance  with  the  rest.  All  of  us  but 
himself,  mistress,  had  got  up  into  the  shrouds,  and  so  could 
£-ee  round  us  a  bit ;  and  he  had  just  laid  his  hand  on  the 
companion  hasp  to  undo  the  door,  when  I  saw  a  tremendous 
sea  coming  rolling  towards  us  like  a  moving  wall,  and  shouted 
on  him  to  hold  fast.     lie  sprang  to  the  weather  back-stay, 


16 

and  laid  hold.  The  sea  came  tumbling  on,  and,  breaking 
full  twenty  feet  over  his  head,  buried  him  for  a  minute's  space 
in  the  foam.  We  thought  we  should  never  see  him  more ; 
but  when  it  cleared  away,  there  was  he  still,  with  his  iron  gripe 
on  the  stay,  though  the  fearful  wave  had  water-logged  the 
Friendship  from  bow  to  stern,  and  swept  her  companion-head 
as  cleanly  off  by  the  deck  as  if  it  had  been  cut  with  a  saw.  No 
human  aid  could  avail  the  poor  woman  and  her  baby.  Master 
could  hear  the  terrible  choaking  noise  of  her  dying  agony  right 
under  his  feet,  with  but  a  two-inch  plank  between  ;  and  the 
sounds  have  haunted  him  ever  since.  But  even  had  he  suc- 
ceeded in  getting  her  on  deck,  she  could  not  possibly  have  sur- 
vived, mistress.  For  five  long  hours  we  clung  to  the  rigging, 
with  the  seas  riding  over  us  all  the  time  like  wild  horses  ;  and 
though  we  could  see,  through  the  snow  drift  and  the  spray, 
crowds  on  the  shore,  and  boats  lying  thick  beside  the  pier, 
none  dared  venture  out  to  assist  us,  till  near  the  close  of  the 
day,  when  the  wind  fell  with  the  falling  tide,  and  we  were 
brought  ashore,  more  dead  than  alive,  by  a  volunteer  crew 
from  the  harbor.  The  unlucky  Friendship  began  to  break  up 
under  us  ere  mid-day,  and  we  saw  the  corpse  of  the  drowned 
woman,  with  the  dead  infant  still  in  its  arms,  come  floating  out 
through  a  hole  in  the  side.  But  the  surf  soon  tore  mother  and 
child  asunder,  and  we  lost  sight  of  them  as  they  drifted  away 
to  the  west.  Master  would  have  crossed  the  Frith  himself 
this  morning  to  relieve  your  mind,  but  being  less  worn  out 
than  any  of  us,  he  thought  it  best  to  remain  in  charge  of  the 
wreck." 

Such,  in  effect,  was  the  narrative  of  Jack  Grant  the  mate. 
The  master,  as  I  have  said,  had  well  nigh  to  commence  the 
world  anew,  and  was  on  the  eve  of  selling  his  new  house  at  a 
disadvantage,  in  order  to  make  up  the  sum  necessary  for  pro- 
viding himself  with  a  new  vessel,  when  a  friend  interposed  and 
advanced  him  the  balance  required.  He  was  assisted,  too,  bv 
a  sister  in  Leith,  who  was  in  tolerably  comfortable  circum- 
stances ;  and  so  he  got  a  new  sloop,  which,  though  not  quite  equal 
in  size  to  the  one  he  had  last,  was  built  wholly  of  oak,  every 


17 

plank  and  beam  of  which  he  had  superintended  in  the  laying 
down,  and  a  prime  sailer  to  boot  ;  and  so,  though  he  had  to 
satisfy  himself  with  the  accommodation  of  the  old  domicile, 
with  its  little  rooms  and  its  small  windows,  and  to  let  the  other 
house  to  a  tenant,  he  began  to  thrive  again  as  before.  Mean- 
while his  aged  cousin  was  gradually  sinking.  The  master  was 
absent  on  one  of  his  longer  voyages,  and  she  too  truly  felt  that 
she  could  not  survive  till  his  return.  She  called  to  her  bed- 
side her  two  young  friends,  the  sisters,  who  had  been  unwea- 
ried in  their  attentions  to  her,  and  poured  out  her  blessing  on 
them  ;  first  on  the  elder,  and  then  on  the  younger.  "  But  as 
for  you,  Harriet,"  she  added,  addressing  the  latter, — "  there 
waits  for  you  one  of  the  best  blessings  of  this  world  also, — the 
blessing  of  a  good  husband  ;  you  will  be  a  gainer  in  the  end, 
even  in  this  life,  through  your  kindness  to  the  poor  childless 
widow."  The  prophesy  was  a  true  one  ;  the  old  woman  had 
shrewdly  marked  where  the  eyes  of  her  cousin  had  been  fall- 
ing of  late  ;  and  in  about  a  twelvmonth  after  her  death,  her 
young  friend  and  pupil  had  become  the  master's  wife.  There 
was  a  very  considerable  disparity  between  their  ages, — the 
master  was  forty -four,  and  his  wife  only  eighteen, — but  never 
was  there  a  happier  marriage.  The  young  wife  was  simple, 
confiding,  and  affectionate,  and  the  master  of  a  soft  and  genial 
nature,  with  a  large  amount  of  buoyant  humor  about  him, 
and  so  equable  in  temper,  that,  during  six  years  of  wedded 
life,  his  wife  never  saw  him  angry  but  once.  I  have  heard  her 
speak  of  the  exceptional  instance,  however,  as  too  terrible  to 
be  readily  forgotten. 

She  had  accompanied  him  on  ship-board,  during  their  first 
year  of  married  life,  to  the  upper  parts  of  the  Cromarty  Frith, 
where  his  sloop  was  taking  in  a  cargo  of  grain,  and  lay  quietly 
embayed  within  two  hundred  yards  cf  the  southern  shore. 
His  mate  had  gone  away  for  the  night  to  the  opposite  side  of 
the  bay,  to  visit  his  parents,  who  resided  in  that  neighbor- 
hood ;  and  the  remaining  crew  consisted  of  but  two  seamen, 
both  young  and  somewhat  reckless  men,  and  the  ship-boy. 
Taking  the  boy  with  them  to  keep  the  ship's  boat  afloat,  and 


18 

wait  their  return,  the  two  sailors  went  ashore  and;  setting  out. 
for  a  distant  public-house,  remained  there  drinking  till  a  late 
hour.  There  was  a  bright  moon  overhead,  but  the  evening 
was  chill  and  frosty  ;  and  the  boy,  cold,  tired,  and  half-over- 
come b}  sleep,  after  wraiting  on  till  past  midnight,  shoved  off 
the  boat  and,  making  his  way  to  the  vessel,  got  straightway 
into  his  hammock,  and  fell  asleep.  Shortly  after,  the  two  men 
came  to  the  shore,  much  the  worse  of  liquor  ;  and,  failing  to 
make  themselves  heard  by  the  boy,  they  stripped  off  their 
clothes,  and,  chilly  as  the  night  was,  swam  aboard.  The  mas- 
ter and  his  wife  had  been  for  hours  snug  in  their  bed,  when 
they  were  awakened  by  the  screams  of  the  boy  ;  the  drunken 
men  were  unmercifully  bastinading  him  with  a  rope's  end 
apiece  ;  and  the  master,  hastily  rising,  had  to  interfere  in  his 
behalf,  and,  with  the  air  of  a  man  wrho  knew  that  remonstrance 
in  the  circumstances  would  be  of  little  avail,  he  sent  them 
both  off  to  their  hammocks.  Scarcely,  however,  had  he  again 
got  into  bed,  when  he  was  a  second  time  aroused  by  the  cries 
of  the  boy,  uttered  on  this  occasion  in  the  shrill  tones  of  agony 
and  terror ;  and,  promptly  springing  up,  now  followed  by  his 
wife,  he  found  the  two  sailors  again  belaboring  the  boy,  and 
that  one  of  them,  in  his  blind  fury,  had  laid  hold  of  a  rope-end, 
armed,  as  is  common  on  shipboard,  with  an  iron  thimble  or 
ring,  and  that  every  blow  produced  a  wound.  The  poor  boy 
was  streaming  over  writh  blood.  The  master,  in  the  extremity 
of  his  indignation,  lost  command  of  himself.  Rushing  in,  the 
two  men  were  in  a  moment  dashed  against  the  deck  ; — they 
seemed  powerless  in  his  hands  as  children  ;  and  had  not  his 
wife,  although  very  unfit  at  the  time  for  mingling  in  a  fray,  run 
in  and  laid  hold  of  him, — a  movement  which  calmed  him  at 
once, — it  was  her  serious  impression  that,  unarmed  as  he  was, 
ne  wrould  have  killed  them  both  upon  the  spot.  There  are,  I 
believe,  few  things  more  formidable  than  the  unwonted  anger 
of  a  good-natured  man. 


OR    THE    STORY  OF  MY  EDUCATION.  19 


CHAPTER  II. 


"Three  stormy  nights  and  stormy  days 
We  tossed  upon  the  raging  main; 
And  long  we  strove  our  bark  to  save, 
But  all  our  striving  was  in  vain." 

Lowe. 

I  was  born,  the  first  child  of  this  marriage,  on  the  10th  day 
of  October,  1802,  in  the  low,  long  house  built  by  my  great- 
grandfather, the  buccaneer.  My  memory  awoke  early.  I  have 
recollections  which  date  several  months  ere  the  completion  of 
my  third  year ;  but,  like  those  of  the  golden  age  of  the  world, 
they  are  chiefly  of  a  mythologic  character.  I  remember,  for 
instance,  getting  out  unobserved  one  day  to  my  father's  little 
garden,  and  seeing  there  a  minute  duckling  covered  with  soft 
yellow  hair,  growing  out  of  the  soil  by  its  feet,  and  beside  it  a 
plant  that  bore  as  its  flowers  a  crop  of  little  mussel  shells  of  a 
deep  red  color.  I  know  not  what  prodigy  of  the  vegetable 
kingdom  produced  the  little  duckling  ;  but  the  plant  with  the 
shells  must,  I  think,  have  been  a  scarlet  runner,  and  the  shells 
themselves  the  papilionaceous  blossoms.  I  have  a  distinct 
-ecollection,  too — but  it  belongs  to  a  later  period — of  seeing 
ny  ancestor,  old  John  Feddes,  the  buccaneer,  though  he  must. 
(.iave  been  dead  at  the  time  considerably  more  than  half  a  cen- 
tury. I  had  learned  to  take  an  interest  in  his  story,  as  pre- 
served and  told  in  the  antique  dwelling  which  lie  had  built 
more  than  a  hundred  years  before.     To  forget  a  love  disap- 


20 

pointment,  he  had  set  out  early  in  life  for  the  Spanish  Main, 
where,  after  giving  and  receiving  some  hard  blows,  he  suc- 
ceeded in  filling  a  little  bag  with  dollars  and  doubloons ;  and 
then  coming  home,  he  found  his  old  sweetheart  a  widow,  and 
so  much  inclined  to  listen  to  reason,  that  she  ultimately  be- 
came his  wife.  There  were  some  little  circumstances  in  his 
history  which  must  have  laid  hold  of  my  imagination ;  for  I 
used  over  and  over  to  demand  its  repetition ;  and  one  of  my 
first  attempts  at  a  work  of  art  was  to  scribble  his  initials  with 
my  fingers,  in  red  paint,  on  the  house-door.  One  day,  when 
playing  all  alone  at  the  stair-foot, — for  the  inmates  of  the 
house  had  gone  out, — something  extraordinary  caught  my  eye 
on  the  landing-place  above ;  and  looking  up,  there  stood  John 
Feddes, — for  I  somehow  instinctively  divined  that  it  was  none 
other  than  he, — in  the  form  of  a  large,  tall,  very  old  man, 
attired  in  a  light-blue  great-coat.  He  seemed  to  be  steadfastly 
regarding  me  with  apparent  complacency ;  but  I  was  sadly 
frightened ;  and  for  years  after,  when  passing  through  the 
dingy,  ill-lighted  room,  out  of  which  I  inferred  he  had  come, 
I  used  to  feel  not  at  all  sure  that  I  might  not  tilt  against  old 
John  in  the  dark. 

I  retain  a  vivid  recollection  of  the  joy  which  used  to  light 
up  the  household  on  my  father's  arrival ;  and  how  I  learned 
to  distinguish  for  myself  his  sloop  when  in  the  offing,  by  the 
two  slim  stripes  of  white  that  ran  along  her  sides,  and  her  two 
square  topsails.  1  have  my  golden  memories,  too,  of  splendid 
toys  that  he  used  to  bring  home  with  him, — among  the  rest, 
of  a  magnificent  four-wheeled  wagon  of  painted  tin,  drawn 
by  four  wooden  horses  and  a  string ;  and  of  getting  it  into  a 
quiet  corner,  immediately  on  its  being  delivered  over  to  me, 
and  there  breaking  up  every  wheel  and  horse,  and  the  vehicle 
itself,  into  their  original  bits,  until  not  two  of  the  pieces  were 
left  sticking  together.  Farther,  I  still  remember  my  disap- 
pointment at  not  finding  something  curious  within  at  least  the 
horses  and  the  wheels ;  and  as  unquestionably  the  main  en- 
joyment derivable  from  such  things  is  to  be  had  in  the  break- 
ing of  them,  I  sometimes  wonder  that  our  ingenious  toymen 


OR,    THE   STOEY   OF  MY  EDUCATION.  21 

do  not  fell  upon  the  way  of  at  once  extending  their  trade,  and 
adding  to  its  philosophy,  by  putting  some  of  their  most  bril- 
liant things  where  nature  puts  the  nut-kernel,  —  inside.  I 
shall  advert  to  but  one  other  recollection  of  this  period.  I 
have  a  dream-like  memory  of  a  busy  time,  when  men  with  gold 
lace  on  their  breasts,  and  at  least  one  gentleman  with  golden 
epaulets  on  his  shoulders,  used  to  call  at  my  father's  house, 
and  fill  my  newly-acquired  pockets  with  coppers ;  and  how 
they  wanted,  it  is  said,  to  bring  my  father  along  with  thern, 
to  help  them  to  sail  their  great  vessel ;  but  he  preferred  re- 
maining, it  was  added,  with  his  own  little  one.  A  ship  of 
war,  under  the  guidance  of  an  unskilful  pilot,  had  run  aground 
on  a  shallow  flat  on  the  opposite  side  of  the  Frith,  known  as 
the  Inches  ;  and  as  the  flood  of  a  stream-tide  was  at  its  height 
at  the  time,  and  straightway  began  to  fall  off,  it  was  found, 
after  lightening  her  of  her  guns  and  the  greater  part  of  her 
stores,  that  she  still  stuck  fast.  My  father,  whose  sloop  hau 
been  pressed  into  the  service,  and  was  loaded  to  the  gun- 
wale with  the  ordnance,  had  betrayed  an  unexpected  knowl- 
edge of  the  points  of  a  large  war  vessel ;  and  the  command- 
er, entering  into  conversation  with  him,  was  so  impressed  by 
his  skill,  that  he  placed  his  ship  under  his  charge,  and  had  his 
confidence  repaid  by  seeing  her  hauled  off  into  deep  water  in 
a  single  tide.  Knowing  the  nature  of  the  bottom, — a  soft 
arenaceous  mud,  which,  if  beat  for  some  time  by  the  foot  of 
hand,  resolved  itself  into  a  sort  of  quicksand,  half  sludge,  half 
water,  which,  when  covered  by  a  competent  depth  of  sea, 
could  offer  no  effectual  resistance  to  a  ship's  keel, — the  master 
had  set  half  the  crew  to  run  in  a  body  from  side  to  side,  till, 
by  the  motion  generated  in  this  way,  the  portion  of  the  bank 
mmediately  beneath  was  beaten  soft ;  and  then  the  other 
moiety  of  the  men.  tugging  hard  on  kedge  and  haulser,  drew 
the  vessel  off  a  few  feet  at  a  time,  till  at  length,  after  not  a 
few  repetitions  of  the  process,  she  floated  free.  Of  course,  on 
a  harder  bottom  the  experiment  would  not  have  availed  ;  but 
so  struck  was  the  commander  by  its  efficacy  and  originality, 
and  by  the  extent  of  the  master's  professional  resources,  that 


22  MY  SCHOOLS  AND   SCHOOLMASTERS; 

he  strongly  recommended  him  to  part  with  his  sloop,  and  en- 
ter the  navy,  where  he  thought  he  had  influence  enough,  he 
said,  to  get  him  placed  in  a  proper  position.  But  as  the  mas- 
ter's previous  experience  of  the  service  had  been  of  a  very 
disagreeable  kind,  and  as  his  position,  as  at  once  master  and 
owner  of  the  vessel  he  sailed,  was  at  least  an  independent 
one,  he  declined  acting  on  the  advice. 

Such  are  some  of  my  earlier  recollections.  But  there  waa 
a  time  of  sterner  memories  at  hand.  The  kelp  trade  had  no 
yet  attained  to  the  importance  which  it  afterwards  acquired, 
ere  it  fell  before  the  first  approaches  of  Free  Trade  ;  and  my 
father,  in  collecting  a  supply  for  the  Leith  Glass  Works,  for 
which  he  occasionally  acted  both  as  agent  and  shipmaster, 
used  sometimes  to  spend  whole  months  amid  the  Hebrides, 
sailing  from  station  to  station,  and  purchasing  here  a  few  tons 
and  there  a  few  hundredweights,  until  he  had  completed  his 
cargo.  In  his  last  kelp  voyage,  he  had  been  detained  in  this 
way  from  the  close  of  August  to  the  end  of  October ;  and  at 
length,  deeply  laden,  he  had  threaded  his  way  round  Cape 
Wrath,  and  through  the  Pentland  and  across  the  Moray  Friths, 
when  a  severe  gale  compelled  him  to  seek  shelter  in  the  har- 
bor of  Peterhead.  From  that  port,  on  the  9th  of  Novem- 
ber, 1807,  he  wrote  my  mother  the  last  letter  she  ever  re- 
ceived from  him  ;  for  on  the  day  after  he  sailed  from  it,  there 
arose  a  terrible  tempest,  in  which  many  seamen  perished, 
and  he  and  his  crew  were  never  more  heard  of.  His  sloop 
was  last  seen  by  a  brother  townsman  and  shipmaster,  who,  ere 
the  storm  came  on,  had  been  fortunate  enough  to  secure  an 
asylum  for  his  bark  in  an  English  harbor  on  an  exposed  por- 
tion of  the  coast.  Vessel  after  vessel  had  been  coming  ashore 
during  the  da}7 ;  and  the  beach  was  strewed  with  wrecks  and 
dead  bodies ;  but  he  had  marked  his  townsman's  sloop  in  the 
offing  from  mid-day  till  near  evening,  exhausting  every  nauti- 
cal shift  and  expedient  to  keep  aloof  from  the  shore ;  and  at 
length,  as  the  night  was  falling,  the  skill  and  perseverance 
exerted  seemed  successful ;  for,  clearing  a  formidable  head- 
land that  had  lain  on  the  lee  for  hours,  and  was  mottled  with 


23 

broken  ships  and  drowned  men,  the  sloop  was  seen  stretching 
out  in  a  long  tack  into  the  open  sea.  "  Miller's  seamanship 
has  saved  him  once  more  !"  said  Matheson,  the  Cromarty  skip- 
per, as,  quitting  his  place  of  outlook,  he  returned  to  his  cabin ; 
but  the  night  fell  tempestuous  and  wild,  and  no  vestige  of  the 
hapless  sloop  was  ever  after  seen.  It  was  supposed  that,  heavi- 
ly laden,  and  laboring  in  a  mountainous  sea,  she  must  have 
started  a  plank  and  foundered.  And  thus  perished — to  bor- 
row from  the  simple  eulogium  of  one  of  his  seafaring  friends 
whom  I  heard  long  after  condoling  wTith  my  mother — "  one 
of  the  best  sailors  that  ever  sailed  the  Moray  Frith." 

The  fatal  tempest,  as  it  had  prevailed  chiefly  on  the  eastern 
coasts  of  England  and  the  south  of  Scotland,  was  represented 
in  the  north  by  but  a  few  bleak,  sullen  days,  in  which,  with 
little  wind,  a  heavy  ground-swell  came  rolling  in  coastwards 
from  the  east,  and  sent  up  its  surf  high  against  the  precipices 
of  the  Northern  Sutor.  There  were  no  forebodings  in  the  mas- 
ter's dwelling  ;  for  his  Peterhead  letter — a  brief  but  hopeful 
missive — had  been  just  received ;  and  my  mother  was  sitting, 
on  the  evening  after,  beside  the  household  fire,  plying  the 
cheerful  needle,  when  the  house-door,  which  had  been  left  un- 
fastened, fell  open,  and  I  was  despatched  from  her  side  to  shut 
it.  What  follows  must  simply  be  regarded  as  the  recollection, 
though  a  very  vivid  one,  of  a  boy  who  had  completed  his  fifth 
year  only  a  month  before.  Day  had  not  wholly  disappeared, 
but  it  was  fast  posting  on  to  night,  and  a  gray  haze  spread  a 
neutral  tint  of  dimness  over  every  more  distant  object,  but  left 
the  nearer  ones  comparatively  distinct,  when  I  saw  at  'ue  open 
door,  within  less  than  a  yard  of  my  breast,  as  plainly  as  ever 
I  saw  anything,  a  dissevered  hand  and  arm  stretched  towards 
me.  Hand  and  arm  were  apparently  those  of  a  female ;  they 
bore  a  livid  and  sodden  appearance ;  and  directly  fronting  me, 
where  the  body  ought  to  have  been,  there  was  only  blank, 
transparent  space,  through  which  I  could  see  the  dim  forms  of 
the  objects  beyond.  I  was  fearfully  startled,  and  ran  shriek- 
ing to  my  mother,  telling  what  I  had  seen ;  and  the  house- 
girl,  whom  she  next  sent  to  shut  the  door,  apparently  affected 


24:  MY  SCHOOLS  AND  SCHOOLMASTERS; 

by  my  terror,  also  returned  frightened,  and  said  that  she  too 
had  seen  the  woman's  hand  ;  which,  however,  did  not  seem  to 
he  the  case.  And  finally,  my  mother  going  to  the  door,  saw 
nothing,  though  she  appeared  much  impressed  by  the  ex- 
tremeness of  my  terror  and  the  minuteness  of  my  description. 
I  communicate  the  story  as  it  lies  fixed  in  my  memory,  with- 
out attempting  to  explain  it.  The  supposed  apparition  may 
have  been  merely  a  momentary  affection  of  the  eye,  of  the  na- 
ure  described  by  Sir  Walter  Scott  in  his  "  Demonology,"  and 
Sir  David  Brewster  in  his  "  Natural  Magic."  But  if  so,  the 
affection  was  one  of  which  I  experienced  no  after-return ;  and 
its  coincidence,  in  the  case,  with  the  probable  time  of  my  fa- 
ther's death,  seems  at  least  curious. 

There  followed  a  dreary  season,  on  which  I  still  look  back 
in  memory,  as  on  a  prospect  which,  sunshiny  and  sparkling 
for  a  time,  has  become  suddenly  enveloped  in  cloud  and  storm. 
I  remember  my  mother's  long  fits  of  weeping,  and  the  general 
gloom  of  the  widowed  household  ;  and  how,  after  she  had  sent 
my  two  little  sisters  to  bed, — for  such  had  been  the  increase  of 
the  family, — and  her  hands  were  set  free  for  the  evening,  she 
used  to  sit  up  late  at  night,  engaged  as  a  seamstress,  in  making 
pieces  of  dress  for  such  of  the  neighbors  as  chose  to  employ 
her.  My  father's  new  house  lay  untenanted  at  the  time  ;  and 
though  his  sloop  had  been  partially  insured,  the  broker  with 
whom  he  dealt  was,  it  would  seem,  on  the  verge  of  insolvency, 
and  having  raised  objections  to  paying  the  money,  it  was  long 
ere  any  part  of  it  cauld  be  realized.  And  so,  with  all  my 
mother's  industry,  the  household  would  have  fared  but  ill  had 
it  not  been  for  the  assistance  lent  her  by  her  two  brothers,  in- 
dustrious, hard-working  men,  who  lived  with  their  aged  parents 
and  an  unmarried  sister,  about  a  bow-shot  away,  and  now  not 
only  advanced  her  money  as  she  needed  it,  but  also  took  her 
second  child,  the  elder  of  my  two  sisters,  a  docile  little  girl  of 
three  years,  to  live  with  them.  I  remember  I  used  to  go  wan- 
dering disconsolately  about  the  harbor  at  this  season,  to  ex- 
amine the  vessels  which  had  come  in  during  the  night ;  and 
that  I  oftener  than  once  set  my  mother  a  crying  by  asking  her 


25 

why  the  shipmasters  who,  when  my  father  was  alive,  used  to 
stroke  my  head,  and  slip  halfpence  into  my  pockets,  never  now 
took  any  notice  of  me,  or  gave  me  anything  1  She  well  knew 
that  the  shipmasters — not  an  ungenerous  class  of  men — had 
simply  failed  to  recognize  their  old  comrade's  child  ;  but  the 
question  was  only  too  suggestive,  notwithstanding,  of  both  her 
own  loss  and  mine.  I  used,  too,  to  climb,  day  after  day,  a 
grassy  protuberance  of  the  old  coast-line  immediately  behind 
my  mother's  house,  that  commands  a  wide  reach  of  the  Mo- 
ray Frith,  and  to  look  wistfully  out,  long  after  every  one  else 
had  ceased  to  hope,  for  the  sloop  with  the  two  stripes  of  white 
and  the  two  square  topsails.  But  months  and  years  passed 
by,  and  the  white  stripes  and  the  square  topsails  I  never  saw. 
The  antecedents  of  my  father's  life  impressed  me  more 
powerfully  during  my  boyhood  than  at  least  aught  I  acquired 
at  school ;  and  I  have  submitted  them  to  the  reader  at  consid- 
erable length,  as  not  only  curious  in  themselves,  but  as  form- 
ing a  first  chapter  in  the  story  of  my  education.  And  the  fol- 
lowing stanzas,  written  at  a  time  when,  in  opening  manhood, 
I  was  sowing  my  wild  oats  in  verse,  may  at  least  serve  to  show 
that  they  continued  to  stand  out  in  bold  relief  on  my  memo- 
ry, even  after  I  had  grown  up. 

"Round  Albyn's  western  shores,  a  lonely  skiff 
Is  coasting  slow ; — the  adverse  winds  detain  ;  # 

And  now  she  rounds  secure  the  dreaded  cliff,* 
Whose  horrid  ridge  beats  back  the  northern  main; 
And  now  the  whirling  Pentland  roars  in  vain 
Her  stern  beneath,  for  favoring  breezes  rise  ; 
The  green  isles  fade,  whitens  the  watery  plain, 
O'er  the  vexed  waves  with  meteor  speed  she  flies, 

Till  Moray's  distant  hills  o'er  the  blue  waves  arise. 

Who  guides  that  vessel's  wanderings  o'er  the  wavo? 

A  patient,  hardy  man,  of  thoughtful  brow  ; 

Serene  and  warm  of  heart,  and  wisely  brave, 

And  sagely  skill'd,  when  burly  breezes  blow, 

To  press  through  angry  waves  the  adventurous  prow. 

*  Cape  Wrath. 


/ 


26  MY  SCHOOLS   AND   SCHOOLMASTERS 

Age  hath  not  quell'd  his  strength,  nor  quench'd  desire 
Of  generous  deed,  nor  chill'd  his  bosom's  glow  ; 
Yet  to  a  better  world  his  hopes  aspire. 
Ah !  this  must  sure  be  thee !    All  hail  my  honored  Sire ! 

Alas  !  thy  latest  voyage  draws  near  a  close, 
For  Death  broods  voiceless  in  the  darkening  sky; 
Subsides  the  breeze ;  th'  untroubled  waves  repose ; 
The  scene  is  peaceful  all.    Can  Death  be  nigh, 
When  thus,  mute  and  unarmed,  his  vassals  lie  ? 
Mark  ye  that  cloud  !    There  toils  the  imprisoned  gale ; 
E'en  now  it  comes,  with  voice  uplifted  high; 
Resound  the  shores,  harsh  screams  the  rending  sail, 
And  roars  th'  amazed  wave,  and  bursts  the  thunder  peal 

Three  days  the  tempest  raged  ;  on  Scotia's  shore 
Wreck  piled  on  wreck,  and  corse  o'er  corse  was  thrown; 
Her  rugged  cliffs  were  red  with  clotted  gore ; 
Her  dark  caves  echoed  back  the  expiring  moan  ; 
And  luckless  maidens  mourned  their  lovers  gone  ; 
And  friendless  orphans  cried  in  vain  for  bread  ; 
And  widow'd  mothers  wandered  forth  alone  ; — 
Restore,  O  wave,  they  cried, — restore  our  dead  ! 
And  then  the  breast  they  bar'd,  and  beat  the  unshelter'd  head. 

Of  thee,  my  Sire,  what  mortal  tongue  can  tell ! 
No  friendly  bay  thy  shattered  bark  received; 
Ev'n  when  thy  dust  repos'd  in  ocean  cell, 
Strange  baseless  tales  of  hope  thy  friends  deceived  ; 
Which  oft  they  doubted  sad,  or  gay  believed. 
At  length,  when  deeper,  darker  waxed  the  gloom, 
.Hopeless  they  grieved,  but  'twas  in  vain  they  grieved  : 
If  God  be  truth,  'tis  sure  no  voice  of  doom, 
That  bids  the  accepted  soul  its  robes  of  joy  assume." 

I  had  been  sent,  previous  to  my  father's  death,  to  a  dame's 
school,  where  I  was  taught  to  pronounce  my  letters  to  such 
effect  in  the  old  Scottish  mode,  that  still,  when  I  attempt  spell- 
ing a  word  aloud,  which  is  not  often, — for  I  find  the  process  a 
very  perilous  one, — the  acts  and  ee's,  and  uhs  and  vaus,  letum 
upon  me,  and  I  have  to  translate  them  with  no  little  hesita 
tion,  as  I  go  along,  into  the  more  modish  sounds.  A  knowl- 
edge of  the  letters  themselves  I  had  already  acquired  by  study- 
ing the  sign-posts  of  the  place, — rare  works  of  art,  that  ex- 
cited my  utmost  admiration,  with  jugs,  and  glasses,  and  bottles, 


27 

and  ships,  and  loaves  of  bread  upon  them,  all  of  which  could, 
as  the  artists  had  intended,  be  actually  recognized.  During 
my  sixth  year  I  spelt  my  way,  under  the  dame,  through  the 
Shorter  Catechism,  the  Proverbs,  and  the  New  Testament, 
and  then  entered  upon  her  highest  form,  as  a  member  of  the 
Bible  class  ;  but  all  the  while  the  process  of  acquiring  learn- 
ing had  been  a  dark  one,  which  I  slowly  mastered,  in  humble 
confidence  in  the  awful  wisdom  of  the  schoolmistress,  not 
knowing  whither  it  tended ;  when  at  once  my  mind  awoke  U 
the  meaning  of  the  most  delightful  of  all  narratives, — th 
story  of  Joseph.  Was  there  ever  such  a  discovery  made  be- 
fore !  I  actually  found  out  for  myself,  that  the  art  of  reading 
is  the  art  of  finding  stories  in  books ;  and  from  that  moment 
reading  became  one  of  the  most  delightful  of  my  amusements. 
I  began  by  getting  into  a  corner  on  the  dismissal  of  the  school, 
and  there  conning  over  to  myself  the  new-found  story  of 
Joseph  ;  nor  did  one  perusal  serve ; — the  other  Scripture  stories 
followed, — in  especial,  the  story  of  Samson  and  the  Philis- 
tines, of  David  and  Goliah,  of  the  prophets  Elijah  and  Elisha  ; 
and  after  these  came  the  New  Testament  stories  and  parables. 
Assisted  by  my  uncles,  too,  I  began  to  collect  a  library  in  a 
box  of  birch-bark  about  nine  inches  square,  which  I  found 
quite  large  enough  to  contain  a  great  many  immortal  works. 
Jack  the  Giant-Killer,  and  Jack  and  the  Bean-Stalk,  and  the 
Yellow  Dwarf,  and  Blue  Beard,  and  Sinbad  the  Sailor,  and 
Beauty  and  the  Beast,  and  Aladdin  and  the  Wonderful  Lamp, 
with  several  others  of  resembling  character.  Those  intolerable 
nuisances  the  useful-knowledge  books  had  not  yet  arisen,  like 
tenebrious  stars,  on  the  educational  horizon,  to  darken  the 
world,  and  shed  their  blighting  influence  on  the  opening  in- 
tellect of  the  "  youthhood ;"  and  so,  from  my  rudimental 
nooks, — books  that  made  themselves  truly  such  by  their 
thorough  assimilation  with  the  rudimental  mind, — I  passed 
on,  without  being  conscious  of  break  or  line  of  division,  to 
books  on  which  the  learned  are  content  to  write  commentaries 
and  dissertations, but  which  I  found  to  be  quite  as  nice  chil- 
dren's books  as  any  of  the  others.     Old  Homer  wrote  admi 


28 

rably  for  l'.ttle  folk,  especially  in  the  Odyssey ;  a  copy  of 
which, — in  the  only  true  translation  extant, — for,  judging 
from  its  surpassing  interest,  and  the  wrath  of  critics,  such  I 
hold  that  of  Pope  to  be, — I  found  in  the  house  of  a  neighbor. 
Next  came  the  Iliad ;  not,  however,  in  a  complete  copy,  but 
represented  by  four  of  the  six  volumes  of  Bernard  Lintot, 
With  what  power,  and  at  how  early  an  age,  true  genius  im 
presses  !  I  saw,  even  at  this  immature  period,  that  no  other 
writer  could  cast  a  javelin  with  half  the  force  of  Homer.  The 
missiles  went  whizzing  athwart  his  pages ;  and  I  could  see 
the  momentary  gleam  of  the  steel,  ere  it  buried  itself  deep  in 
brass  and  bull-hide.  I  next  succeeded  in  discovering  for  my- 
self a  child's  book,  of  not  less  interest  than  even  the  Iliad, 
which  might,  I  was  told,  be  read  on  Sabbaths,  in  a  magnifi- 
cent old  edition  of  the  "  Pilgrim's  Progress,"  printed  on  coarse 
whity-brown  paper,  and  charged  with  numerous  wood-cuts, 
each  of  which  occupied  an  entire  page,  that,  on  principles  of 
economy,  bore  letter-press  on  the  other  side.  And  such  de- 
lightful prints  as  they  were  !  It  must  have  been  some  such 
volume  that  sat  for  its  portrait  to  Wordsworth,  and  which  he 
so  exquisitely  describes  as 

"Profuse  in  garniture  of  wooden  cuts, 
Strange  and  uncouth  ;  dire  faces,  figures  dire, 
Sharp-knee'd,  sharp-elbow'd,  and  lean  ancled  too, 
With  long  and  ghasily  shanks, — forms  which,  once  seen, 
Could  never  be  forgotten." 

In  process  of  time  I  had  devoured,  besides  these  genial  works, 
Robinson  Crusoe,  Gulliver's  Travels,  Ambrose  on  Angels,  the 
"judgment  chapter"  in  Howie's  Scotch  Worthies,  Byron's 
Narrative,  and  the  adventures  of  Philip  Quarll,  with  a  good 

nany  other  adventures  and  voyages,  real  and  fictitious,  part  of 
very  miscellaneous  collection  of  books  made  by  my  father. 

t  was  a  melancholy  little  library  to  which  I  had  fallen  heir, 
Most  of  the  missing  volumes  had  been  with  the  master  aboard 
his  vessel  when  he  perished.  Of  an  early  edition  of  Cook's 
Voyages,  all  the  volumes  were  now  absent  save  the  first ;  and 
a  very  tantalizing  romance,  in  four  volumes, — Mrs.  RatclifFs 


29 

"  Mysteries  of  Udolpho," — was  represented  by  only  the  earlier 
two.  Small  as  the  collection  was,  it  contained  some  rare  books, 
■ — among  the  rest,  a  curious  little  volume,  entitled  "  The  Mir- 
acles of  Nature  and  Art,"  to  which  we  find  Dr.  Johnson  re- 
ferring, in  one  of  the  dialogues  chronicled  by  Boswell,  as  scarce 
even  in  his  day,  and  which  had  been  published,  he  said,  some 
time  in  the  seventeenth  century  by  a  bookseller  whose  shop 
hung  perched  on  Old  London  Bridge,  between  sky  and  water. 
It  contained,  too,  the  only  copy  I  ever  saw  of  the  "  Memoirs 
of  a  Protestant  condemned  to  the  Galleys  of  France  for  his  Re- 
ligion,"— a  work  interesting  from  the  circumstance  that — 
though  it  bore  another  name  on  its  title-page — it  had  been 
translated  from  the  French  for  a  few  guineas  by  poor  Gold- 
smith, in  his  days  of  obscure  literary  drudgery,  and  exhibited 
the  peculiar  excellencies  of  his  style.  The  collection  boasted, 
besides,  of  a  curious  old  book,  illustrated  by  very  uncouth 
plates,  that  detailed  the  perils  and  sufferings  of  an  English 
sailor  who  had  spent  the  best  years  of  his  life  as  a  slave  in  Mo- 
rocco. It  had  its  volumes  of  sound  theology,  too,  and  of  stiff 
controversy, — Flavel's  Works,  and  Henry's  Commentary,  and 
Hutchinson  on  the  Lesser  Prophets,  and  a  very  old  treatise  on 
the  Revelations,  with  the  title  page  away,  and  blind  Jame- 
son's volume  on  the  Hierarchy,  with  first  editions  of  Naphtali, 
the  Cloud  of  Witnesses,  and  the  Hind  Let  Loose.  But  with 
these  solid  authors  I  did  not  venture  to  grapple  until  long 
after  this  time.  Of  the  works  of  fact  and  incident  which  it 
contained,  those  of  the  voyages  were  my  especial  favorites. 
I  perused  with  avidity  the  voyages  of  Anson,  Drake,  Raleigh, 
Dampier,  and  Captain  Woods  Rogers  ;  and  my  mind  became 
so  filled  with  conceptions  of  what  was  to  be  seen  and  done  in 
foreign  parts,  that  I  wished  myself  big  enough  to  be  a  sailor, 
that  I  might  go  and  see  coral  islands  and  burning  mountains, 
and  hunt  wild  beasts  and  fight  battles. 

I  have  already  made  mention  of  my  two  maternal  uncles ; 
and  referred,  at  least  incidentally,  to  their  mother,  as  the  friend 
and  relative  of  my  father's  aged  cousins,  and,  like  her,  a  great- 
grand-child  of  the  last  curate  of  Nigg.     The  curate's  youngest 


30  MY  SCHOOLS  AND  SCHOOLMASTERS; 

daughter  had  been  courted  and  married  by  a  somewhat  wild 
young  farmer,  of  the  clan  Ross,  but  who  was  known,  like  the 
celebrated  Highland  outlaw,  from  the  color  of  his  hair,  as 
Roy,  or  the  red.  Donald  Roy  was  the  best  club-player  in  the 
district ;  and  as  King  James's  "  Book  of  Sports''  was  not  deem- 
ed a  very  bad  book  in  the  semi-Celtic  parish  of  Nigg,  the 
games  in  which  Donald  took  part  were  usually  played  on  the 
Sabbath.  About  the  time  of  the  Revolution,  however,  he  was 
laid  hold  of  by  strong  religious  convictions,  heralded,  say  the 
traditions  of  the  district,  by  events  that  approximated  in  cha- 
racter to  the  supernatural ;  and  Donald  became  the  subject  of 
a  mighty  change.  There  is  a  phase  of  the  religious  character, 
which  in  the  South  of  Scotland  belongs  to  the  first  two  ages  of 
Presbytery,  but  which  disappeared  ere  its  third  establishment 
under  William  of  Nassau,  that  we  find  strikingly  exemplified 
in  the  Welches,  Pedens,  and  Cargills  of  the  times  of  the  perse- 
cution, and  in  which  a  sort  of  wild  machinery  of  the  supernatu- 
ral was  added  to  the  commoner  aspects  of  a  living  Christianity. 
The  men  in  whom  it  wras  exhibited  were  seers  of  visions  and 
dreamers  of  dreams  ;  and,  standing  on  the  very  verge  of  the 
natural  world,  they  looked  far  into  the  world  of  spirits,  and 
had  at  times  their  strange  glimpses  of  the  distant  and  the  fu- 
ture. To  the  north  of  the  Grampians,  as  if  born  out  of  due 
season,  these  seers  pertain  to  a  later  age.  They  flourished 
chiefly  in  the  early  part  of  the  last  century  ;  for  it  is  a  not  un- 
instructive  fact,  that  in  the  religious  history  of  Scotland,  the 
eighteenth  century  of  the  Highland  and  semi-Highland  dis- 
tricts of  the  north  corresponds  in  many  of  its  traits  to  the  seven- 
teenth century  of  the  Saxon-peopled  districts  of  the  south ;  and 
Donald  Roy  was  one  of  the  most  notable  of  the  class.  The 
anecdotes  regarding  him  which  still  float  among  the  old  recol- 
lections of  Ross-shire,  if  transferred  to  Peden  or  Welch,  would 
be  found  entirely  in  character  with  the  strange  stories  that  inlay 
the  biographies  of  these  devoted  men,  and  live  so  enduringly 
in  the  memory  of  the  Scottish  people.  Living,  too,  in  an  age 
in  which,  like  the  Covenanters  of  a  former  century,  the  High- 
lander still  retained  his  weapons,  and  knew  how  to  use  them, 


31 

Donald  had,  like  the  Patons,  Hackstons,  and  Bal fours  of  the 
south,  his  dash  of  the  warlike  spirit ;  and  after  assisting  his 
minister,  previous  to  the  rebellion  of  1745,  in  what  was  known 
as  the  great  religious  revival  of  Nigg,  he  had  to  assist  him, 
shortly  after,  in  pursuing  a  band  of  armed  Caterans,  that,  de- 
scending from  the  hills,  swept  the  parish  of  its  cattle.  And 
coming  up  with  the  outlaws  in  the  gorges  of  a  wild  Highland 
glen,  no  man  of  his  party  was  more  active  in  the  fray  that  fol- 
owed  than  old  Donald,  or  exerted  himself  to  better  effect  in 
re-capturing  the  cattle.  I  need  scarce  add,  that  he  was  an  at- 
tached member  of  the  Church  of  Scotland.  But  he  was  not 
destined  to  die  in  her  communion. 

Donald's  minister,  John  Balfour  of  Nigg, — a  man  whose 
memory  is  still  honored  in  the  north,  died  in  middle  life,  and 
an  unpopular  presentee  was  obtruded  on  the  people.  The 
policy  of  Robertson  prevailed  at  the  time ;  Gillespie  had  been 
deposed  only  four  years  previous,  for  refusing  to  assist  in  the 
disputed  settlement  of  Inverkeithing ;  and  four  of  the  Nigg 
Presbytery,  overawed  by  the  stringency  of  the  precedent,  re- 
paired to  the  parish  church  to  conduct  the  settlement  of  the 
obnoxious  licentiate,  and  introduce  him  to  the  parishoners. 
They  found,  however,  only  an  empty  building ;  and,  notwith- 
standing the  ominous  absence  of  the  people,  they  were  pro- 
ceeding in  shame  and  sorrow  with  their  work,  when  a  solitary 
and  venerable  man,  far  advanced  in  life,  appeared  before  them, 
and,  solemnly  protesting  against  the  utter  mockery  of  such  a 
proceeding,  impressively  declared,  "  that  if  they  settled  a  man 
to  the  walls  of  that  kirk,  the  blood  of  the  parish  of  Nigg  would 
be  required  at  their  hands."  Both  Dr.  Hetherington  and  Dr. 
Merle  D'Aubigne  record  the  event ;  but  neither  of  these  ac- 
complished historians  seem  to  have  been  aware  of  the  pecu- 
Jiar  emphasis  which  a  scene  that  would  have  been  striking  in 
any  circumstances  derived  from  the  character  of  the  protester, 
— old  Donald  Roy.  The  Presbytery,  appalled,  stopt  short  in 
the  middle  of  its  work  ;  nor  was  it  resumed  till  an  after  day, 
when,  at  the  command  of  the  Moderate  majority  of  the  Church, 
— a  command  not  unaccompanied  by  significant  reference  to 


32 

the  fate  of  Gillespie, — the  forced  settlement  was  consummated. 
Donald,  who  carried  the  entire  parish  with  him,  continued  to 
cling  by  the  National  Church  for  nearly  ten  years  after,  much 
befriended  by  one  of  the  most  eminent  and  influential  divines 
of  the  north, — Fraser  of  Alness, — the  author  of  a  volume  on 
Sanctification,  still  regarded  as  a  standard  work  by  Scottish 
theologians.  But  as  neither  the  people  nor  their  leader  ever 
entered  on  any  occasion  the  parish  church,  or  heard  the  ob- 
noxious presentee,  the  Presbytery  at  length  refused  to  tolerate 
the  irregularity  by  extending  to  them,  as  before,  the  ordinary 
Church  privileges ;  and  so  they  were  lost  to  the  Establish- 
ment, and  became  Seceders.  And  in  the  communion  of  that 
portion  of  the  Secession  known  as  the  Burghers,  Donald  died 
several  years  after,  at  a  patriarchal  old  age. 

Among  his  other  descendants,  he  had  three  grand-daughters, 
who  were  left  orphans  at  an  early  age  by  the  death  of  both 
their  parents,  and  whom  the  old  man,  on  their  bereavement, 
had  brought  to  his  dwelling  to  live  with  him.  They  had  small 
portions  apiece,  derived  from  his  son-in-law,  their  father,  which 
did  not  grow  smaller  under  the  care  of  Donald  ;  and  as  each 
of  the  three  was  married  in  succession  out  of  his  family,  he 
added  to  all  his  other  kindnesses  the  gift  of  a  gold  ring.  They 
had  been  brought  up  under  his  eye  sound  in  the  faith  ;  and 
Donald's  ring  had,  in  each  case,  a  mystic  meaning ; — they  were 
to  regard  it,  he  told  them,  as  the  wedding  ring  of  their  other 
Husband,  the  Head  of  the  Church,  and  to  be  faithful  spouses 
to  Him  in  their  several  households.  Nor  did  the  injunction, 
nor  the  significant  symbol  with  wrhich  it  was  accompanied, 
prove  idle  in  the  end.  They  all  brought  the  savor  of  sincere 
piety  into  their  families.  The  grand-daughter,  with  whom 
the  writer  was  more  directly  connected,  had  been  married  to 
an  honest  and  industrious  but  somewhat  gay  young  trades- 
man, but  she  proved,  under  God,  the  means  of  his  conversion  • 
and  their  children,  of  whom  eight  grew  up  to  be  men  and 
women,  were  reared  in  decent  frugality,  and  the  exercise  of 
honest  principles  carefully  instilled.  Her  husband's  family 
had,  like  that  of  my  paternal  ancestors,  been  a  seafaring  one. 


33 

His  father,  after  serving  on  shipboard,  had  passed  the  latter 
part  of  his  life  as  one  of  the  armed  boatmen  that,  during  the 
last  century,  guarded  the  coasts  in  behalf  of  the  revenue ;  and 
his  only  brother,  the  boatman's  son,  an  adventurous  young 
sailor,  had  engaged  in  Admiral  Vernon's  unfortunate  expedi- 
tion, and  left  his  bones  under  the  walls  of  Carthagena  ;  but  he 
himself  pursued  the  peaceful  occupation  of  a  shoemaker,  and 
in  carrying  on  his  trade,  usually  employed  a  few  journeymen, 
and  kept  a  few  apprentices.  In  course  of  time,  the  elder 
daughters  of  the  family  married  and  got  households  of  their 
own ;  but  the  two  sons,  my  uncles,  remained  under  the  roof 
of  their  parents,  and  at  the  time  when  my  father  perished  they 
were  both  in  middle  life  ;  and,  deeming  themselves  called  on 
to  take  his  place  in  the  work  of  instruction  and  discipline.  1 
owed  to  them  much  more  of  my  real  education  than  to  any  of 
the  teachers  whose  schools  I  afterwards  attended.  They  both 
bore  a  marked  individuality  of  character,  and  were  much  the 
reverse  of  common-place  or  vulgar  men. 

My  elder  uncle,  James,  added  to  a  clear  head  and  much 
native  sagacity,  a  singularly  retentive  memory,  and  great  thirst 
of  information.  He  was  a  harness-maker,  and  wrought  for 
the  farmers  of  an  extensive  district  of  country ;  and  as  he 
never  engaged  either  journeymen  or  apprentice,  but  executed 
all  his  work  with  his  own  hands,  his  hours  of  labor,  save  that 
he  indulged  in  a  brief  pause  as  the  twilight  came  on,  and  took 
a  mile's  walk  or  so,  were  usually  protracted  from  six  o'clock 
in  the  morning  till  ten  at  night.  Such  incessant  occupa- 
tion, of  course,  left  him  little  time  for  reading  ;  but  he  often 
found  some  one  to  read  beside  him  during  the  day ;  and  in 
the  winter  evenings,  his  portable  bench  used  to  be  brought 
from  his  shop  at  the  other  end  of  the  dwelling,  into  the  family 
sitting-room,  and  placed  beside  the  circle  round  the  hearth, 
where  his  brother  Alexander,  my  younger  uncle,  whose  occu- 
pation left  his  evenings  free,  would  read  aloud  from  some  inter 
esting  volume  for  the  general  benefit, — placing  himself  al 
ways  at  the  opposite  side  of  the  bench,  so  as  to  share  in  the 
light  of  the  worker.     Occasionally  the  family  circle  would  be 


34  MY  SCHOOLS  AND  SCHOOLMASTERS; 

widened  by  the  accession  of  from  two  to  three  intelligent 
neighbors,  who  would  drop  in  to  listen ;  and  then  the  book, 
after  a  space,  would  be  laid  aside,  in  order  that  its  contents 
might  be  discussed  in  conversation.  In  the  summer  months, 
Uncle  James  always  spent  some  time  in  the  country,  in  look- 
ing after  and  keeping  in  repair  the  harness  of  the  farmers  for 
whom  he  wrought ;  and  during  his  journeys  and  twilight  walks 
on  these  occasions,  there  was  not  an  old  castle,  or  hill-fort,  or 
ancient  encampment,  or  antique  ecclesiastical  edifice,  within 
twenty  miles  of  the  town,  which  he  had  not  visited  and  ex 
amined  over  and  over  again.  He  was  a  keen,  local  antiquary ; 
knew  a  good  deal  about  the  architectural  styles  of  the  various 
ages,  at  a  time  when  these  subjects  were  little  studied  or 
known,  and  possessed  more  traditionary  lore,  picked  up  chiefly 
in  his  country  journeys,  than  any  man  I  ever  knew.  What 
he  once  heard  he  never  forgot ;  and  the  knowledge  which  he 
had  acquired  he  could  communicate  pleasingly  and  succinctly, 
in  a  style  which,  had  he  been  a  writer  of  books,  instead  of 
merely  a  reader  of  them,  would  have  had  the  merit  of  being 
clear  and  terse,  and  more  laden  with  meaning  than  words. 
From  his  reputation  for  sagacity,  his  advice  used  to  be  much 
sought  after  by  the  neighbors  in  every  little  difficulty  that, 
came  their  way  ;  and  the  counsel  given  was  always  shrewd  and 
honest.  I  never  knew  a  man  more  entirely  just  in  his  deal- 
ings than  Uncle  James,  or  who  regarded  every  species  of  mean- 
ness with  a  more  thorough  contempt.  I  soon  learned  to  bring 
my  story-books  to  his  workshop,  and  became,  in  a  small  way, 
one  of  his  readers — greatly  more,  however,  as  may  be  suppos- 
ed, on  my  own  account  than  his.  My  books  were  not  yet  of 
the  kind  which  he  would  have  chosen  for  himself;  but  he  took 
an  interest  in  my  interest ;  and  his  explanations  of  all  the  han 
words  saved  me  the  trouble  of  turning  over  a  dictionary.  An 
when  tired  of  reading,  I  never  failed  to  find  rare  delight  in  his 
anecdotes  and  old-world  stories,  many  of  which  were  not  to  be 
found  in  books,  and  all  of  which,  without  apparent  effort  on 
his  own  part,  he  could  render  singularly  amusing.  Of  these 
narratives,  the  larger  part  died  with  him ;  but  a  portion  of 


35 

them  I  succeeded  in  preserving  in  a  little  traditionary  work 
published  a  few  years  after  his  death.  I  was  much  a  favorite 
with  Uncle  James — even  more,  I  am  disposed  to  think,  on 
rny  father's  account,  than  on  that  of  his  sister,  my  mother. 
My  father  and  he  had  been  close  friends  for  years ;  and  in  the 
vigorous  and  energetic  sailor,  he  had  found  his  beau  ideal  of 
a  man. 

My  Uncle  Alexander  was  of  a  different  cast  from  his  brother 
b«  th  in  intellect  and  temperament ;  but  he  was  characterized 
by  the  same  strict  integrity  ;  and  his  religious  feelings,  though 
quiet  and  unobtrusive,  were  perhaps  more  deep.  James  was 
somewhat  of  a  humorist,  and  fond  of  a  good  joke.  Alexan- 
der was  grave  and  serious  ;  and  never,  save  on  one  solitary 
occasion,  did  I  know  him  even  attempt  a  jest.  On  hearing 
an  intelligent  but  somewhat  eccentric  neighbor  observe  that 
"  all  flesh  is  grass,"  in  a  strictly  physical  sense,  seeing  that  all 
the  flesh  of  the  herbiverous  animals  is  elaborated  from  vege- 
tation, and  all  the  flesh  of  the  carnivorous  animals  from  that 
of  the  herbiverous  ones,  Uncle  Sandy  remarked  that,  knowing, 
as  he  did,  the  pisciverous  habits  of  the  Cromarty  folk,  he 
should  surely  make  an  exception  in  his  generalization,  by  ad- 
mitting that  in  at  least  one  village,  "  all  flesh  is  fish."  My 
uncle  had  acquired  the  trade  of  the  cartwright,  and  was  em- 
ployed in  a  workshop  at  Glasgow  at  the  time  the  first  war  of 
the  French  Revolution  broke  out ;  when,  moved  by  some  such 
spirit  as  possessed  his  uncle — the  victim  of  Admiral  Vernon's 
unlucky  expedition — or  of  old  Donald  Roy,  when  he  buckled 
himself  to  his  Highland  broadsword,  and  set  out  in  pursuit  of 
the  Caterans — he  entered  the  navy.  And  during  the  event- 
ful period  which  intervened  between  the  commencement  of 
the  war  and  the  peace  of  1802,  there  was  little  either  suffered 
or  achieved  by  his  countrymen  in  which  he  had  not  a  share. 
He  sailed  with  Nelson  ;  witnessed  the  mutiny  at  the  Nore ; 
fought  under  Admiral  Duncan  at  Camperdown,  and  under  Sir 
John  Borlase  Warren  off  Loch  S willy ;  assisted  in  capturing 
the  Generoux  and  Guillaum  Tell,  two  French  ships  of  the  line; 
was  one  of  the  seamen  who,  in  the  Egyptian  expedition,  were 
3 


36  MY  SCHOOLS  AND  SCHOOLMASTERS; 

drafted  out  of  Lord  Keith's  fleet  to  supply  the  lack  of  artillery 
men  in  the  army  of  Sir  Ralph  Abercromby  ;  had  a  share  in 
the  dangers  and  glory  of  the  landing  in  Egypt ;  and  fought  in 
the  battle  of  the  13th  March,  and  in  that  which  deprived  our 
country  of  one  of  her  most  popular  generals.  He  served,  too, 
at  the  siege  of  Alexandria.  And  then,  as  he  succeeded  in  pro- 
curing his  discharge  during  the  short  peace  of  1802,  he  re- 
turned home  with  a  small  sum  of  hardly-earned  prize  money, 
heartily  sick  of  war  and  bloodshed.  I  was  asked,  not  long 
ago,  by  one  of  his  few  surviving  comrades,  whether  my  uncle 
had  ever  told  me  that  their  gun  was  the  first  landed  in  Egypt, 
and  the  first  dragged  up  the  sand-bank  immediately  over  the 
beach,  and  how  hot  it  grew  under  their  hands,  as,  with  a  rapid- 
ity unsurpassed,  along  the  line  they  poured  out  in  thick  suc- 
cession its  iron  discharges  upon  the  enemy.  I  had  to  reply- 
in  the  negative.  All  my  uncle's  narratives  were  narratives 
of  what  he  had  seen — not  of  what  he  had  done;  and,  when 
perusing,  late  in  life,  one  of  his  favorite  works — "  Dr.  Keith's 
Signs  of  the  Times" — he  came  to  the  chapter  in  which  that 
excellent  writer  describes  the  time  of  hot  naval  warfare  which 
immediately  followed  the  breaking  out  of  war,  as  the  period  in 
which  the  second  vial  was  poured  out  on  the  sea,  and  in  which 
the  waters  "  became  as  the  blood  of  a  dead  man,  so  that  every 
living  soul  died  in  the  sea,"  I  saw  him  bend  his  head  in  rever- 
ence as  he  remarked,  "  Prophecy,  I  find,  gives  to  all  our 
glories  but  a  single  verse,  and  it  is  a  verse  of  judgment." 
Uncle  Sandy,  however,  did  not  urge  the  peace  principles  which 
he  had  acquired  amid  scenes  of  death  and  carnage,  into  any 
extravagant  consequences;  and  on  the  breaking  out,  in  1803, 
of  the  second  war  of  the  Revolution,  when  Napoleon  threatened 
invasion  from  Brest  to  Boulogne,  he  at  once  shouldered  his 
musket  as  a  volunteer.  He  had  not  his  brother's  fluency  of 
speech ;  but  his  narratives  of  what  he  had  seen  were  singu- 
larly truthful  and  graphic ;  and  his  descriptions  of  foreign 
plants  and  animals,  and  of  the  aspect  of  the  distant  regions 
which  he  had  visited,  had  all  the  careful  minuteness  of  those 
of  a  Dampier.     He  had  a  decided  turn  for  natural  history. 


OR,    THE   STORY    OF   MY   EDUCATION.  37 

My  collection  contains  a  murex,  not  unfrequent  in  the  Medi- 
terranean, which  he  found  time  enough  to  transfer,  during 
the  heat  of  the  landing  in  Egypt,  from  the  beach  to  his  pock- 
et; and  the  first  ammonite  I  ever  saw  was  a  specimen,  which 
I  still  retain,  that  he  brought  home  with  him  from  one  of  the 
liasic  deposits  of  England. 

Early  on  the  Sabbath  evenings  I  used  regularly  to  attend 
at  my  uncles'  with  two  of  my  maternal  cousins,  boys  of  about 
my  own  age,  and  latterly  with  my  two  sisters,  to  be  cate- 
chised, first  on  the  Shorter  Catechism,  and  then  on  the  Moth- 
er's Catechism  of  Willison.  On  Willison  my  uncles  always 
cross-examined  us,  to  make  sure  that  we  understood  the  short 
and  simple  questions  ;  but,  apparently  regarding  the  questions 
of  the  Shorter  Catechism  as  seed  sown  for  a  future  day,  they 
were  content  with  having  them  well  fixed  in  our  memories. 
There  was  a  Sabbath  class  taught  in  the  parish  church  at  the 
time  by  one  of  the  elders ;  but  Sabbath  schools  my  uncles 
regarded  as  merely  compensatory  institutions,  highly  credit- 
able to  the  teachers,  but  very  discreditable  indeed  to  the  pa- 
rents and  relatives  of  the  taught;  and  so  they  of  course  never 
thought  of  sending  us  there.  Later  in  the  evening,  after  a 
short  twilight  walk,  for  w^hich  the  sedentary  occupation  of  my 
Uncle  James  formed  an  apology,  but  in  which  my  Uncle  Alex- 
ander always  shared,  and  which  usually  led  them  into  solitary 
woods,  or  along  an  unfrequented  sea-shore,  some  of  the  old 
divines  were  read  ;  and  I  used  to  take  my  place  in  the  circle, 
though,  I  am  afraid,  not  to  very  much  advantage.  I  occasion- 
ally caught  a  fact,  or  had  my  attention  arrested  for  a  moment 
by  a  simile  or  metaphor ;  but  the  trains  of  close  argument, 
ur_d  the  passages  of  dreary  "  application,"  were  always  lost. 


83  MY  SCHOOLS   A.NI)  SCHOOLMASTEBS 


CHAPTER    III 


**  At  Wallace  name  what  Scottish  blood 
But  boils  up  in  a  spring-tide  flood ! 
Oft  have  our  fearless  fathers  strode 

By  Wallace  side, 
Still  pressing  onward,  red  wat  shod, 
Or  glorious  died." 

Burns. 


/ 


I  first  became  thoroughly  a  Scot  some  time  in  my  tenth  year ; 
and  the  consciousness  of  country  has  remained  tolerably  strong 
within  me  ever  since.  My  Uncle  James  had  procured  for  me 
from  a  neighbor  the  loan  of  a  common  stall-edition  of  Blind 
Harry's  "  Wallace,"  as  modernized  by  Hamilton  ;  but  after 
reading  the  first  chapter, — a  piece  of  dull  genealogy,  broken 
into  very  rude  rhyme, — I  tossed  the  volume  aside  as  uninter- 
esting ;  and  only  resumed  it  at  the  request  of  my  uncle,  who 
urged  that,  simply  for  his  amusement  and  gratification,  I  should 
read  some  three  or  four  chapters  more.  Accordingly,  the  three 
or  four  chapters  more  I  did  read ; — I  read  "  how  Wallace  kill- 
ed young  Selbie  the  Constable's  son ;"  "  how  Wallace  fished 
in  Irvine  Water ;"  and  "  how  Wallace  killed  the  Churl  with  his 
own  staff  in  Ayr ;"  and  then  Uncle  James  told  me,  in  the 
quiet  way  in  which  he  used  to  make  a  joke  tell,  that  the  book 
seemed  to  be  rather  a  rough  sort  of  production,  filled  with 
accounts  of  quarrels  and  bloodshed,  and  that  I  might  read  no 
more  of  it  unless  I  felt  inclined.  But  I  now  did  feel  inclined 
very  strongly,  and  read  on  with  increasing  astonishment  and 


OR,    THE   STORY   OF   MY  EDUCATION.  39 

delight.  I  was  intoxicated  with  the  fiery  narratives  of  the 
blind  minstrel, — with  his  fierce  breathings  of  hot,  intolerant 
patriotism,  and  his  stories  of  astonishing  prowess ;  and,  glory- 
ing in  being  a  Scot,  and  the  countryman  of  Wallace  and  the 
Graham,  I  longed  for  a  war  with  the  Southron,  that  the  wrongs 
and  sufferings  of  these  noble  heroes  might  yet  be  avenged. 
All  I  had  previously  heard  and  read  of  the  marvels  of  foreign 
parts,  or  the  glories  of  modern  battles,  seemed  tame  and  com- 
monplace compared  with  the  incidents  in  the  life  of  Wallace 
and  I  never  after  vexed  my  mother  by  wishing  myself  big 
enough  to  be  a  sailor.  My  Uncle  Sandy,  who  had  some  taste 
for  the  refinements  of  poetry,  would  fain  have  led  me  on  from 
the  exploits  of  Wallace  to  the  "  Life  of  the  Bruce,"  which,  in 
the  form  of  a  not  very  vigorous  imitation  of  Dry  den's  "  Vir- 
gil," by  one  Harvey,  was  bound  up  in  the  same  volume,  and 
which  my  uncle  deemed  the  better-written  life  of  the  two. 
And  so  far  as  the  mere  amenities  of  style  were  concerned, 
he  was,  I  dare  say,  right.  But  I  could  not  agree  with  him. 
Harvey  was  by  much  too  fine  and  too  learned  for  me ;  and  it 
was  not  until  some  years  after,  when  I  was  fortunate  enough 
to  pick  up  one  of  the  later  editions  of  Barbour's  "  Bruce,"  that 
the  Hero-King  of  Scotland  assumed  his  right  place  in  my 
mind  beside  its  Hero-Guardian.  There  are  stages  of  develop- 
ment in  the  immature  youth  of  individuals,  that  seem  to  cor- 
respond with  stages  of  development  in  the  immature  youth  of 
nations ;  and  the  recollections  of  this  early  time  enable  me,  in 
some  measure,  to  understand  how  it  was  that,  for  hundreds 
of  years,  Blind  Harry's  "  Wallace,"  with  its  rude  and  naked 
narrative,  and  its  exaggerated  incident,  should  have  been,  ac- 
cording to  Lord  Hailes,  the  Bible  of  the  Scotch  people. 

I  quitted  the  dame's  school  at  the  end  of  the  first  tweUe- 
month,  after  mastering  that  grand  acquirement  of  my  life, — > 
the  art  of  holding  converse  with  books  ;  and  was  transferred 
straightforth  to  the  grammar  school  of  the  parish,  at  which 
there  attended  at  the  time  about  a  hundred  and  twenty  boys, 
with  a  class  of  about  thirty  individuals  more,  much  looked 
down  upon  by  the  others,  and  not  deemed  greatly  worth  the 


40 

counting  seeing  that  it  consisted  of  only  lassies.  And  here, 
too,  the  early  individual  development  seems  nicely  correspond- 
ent with  an  early  national  one.  In  his  depreciatory  estimate 
of  contemporary  woman,  the  boy  is  always  a  true  savage.  The 
old  parish  school  of  the  place  had  been  nobly  situated  in  a  snug 
corner,  between  the  parish  churchyard  and  a  thick  wood ;  and 
from  the  interesting  centre  which  it  formed,  the  boys,  when 
tired  of  making  dragon-horses  of  the  erect  head-stones,  or  of 
leaping  along  the  flat-laid  memorials,  from  end  to  end  of  the 
graveyard,  "  without  touching  grass,"  could  repair  to  the  tall- 
er trees,  and  rise  in  the  world  by  climbing  among  them.  As, 
however,  they  used  to  encroach,  on  these  latter  occasions,  upon 
the  laird's  pleasure-grounds,  the  school  had  been  removed  ere 
my  time  to  the  sea-shore  ;  where,  though  there  were  neither 
tombstones  nor  trees,  there  were  some  balancing  advantages, 
of  a  kind  which,  perhaps,  only  boys  of  the  old  school  could 
have  adequately  appreciated.  As  the  school-windows  fronted 
the  opening  of  the  Frith,  not  a  vessel  could  enter  the  harbor 
that  we  did  not  see ;  and,  improving  through  our  opportuni- 
ties, there  was  perhaps  no  educational  institution  in  the  king- 
dom in  which  all  sorts  of  barks  and  carvels,  from  the  fishing 
yawl  to  the  frigate,  could  be  more  correctly  drawn  on  the 
slate,  or  where  any  defect  in  bulk  or  rigging,  in  some  faulty 
delineation,  was  surer  of  being  more  justly  and  unsparingly 
criticised.  Further,  the  town,  which  drove  a  great  trade  in 
salted  pork  at  the  time,  had  a  killing-place  not  thirty  yards 
from  the  school-door,  where  from  eighty  to  a  hundred  pigs 
used  sometimes  to  die  for  the  general  good  in  a  single  day ;  and 
it  was  a  great  matter  to  hear,  at  occasional  intervals,  the  roar 
of  death  outside  rising  high  over  the  general  murmur  within  ; 
or  to  be  told  by  some  comrade,  returned  from  his  five  minutes' 
leave  of  absence,  that  a  hero  of  a  pig  had  taken  three  blows  of 
the  hatchet  ere  it  fell,  and  that  even  after  its  subjection  to  the 
sticking  process,  it  had  got  hold  of  Jock  Keddie's  hand  in  its 
mouth,  and  almost  smashed  his  thumb.  We  learned,  too,  to 
know,  from  our  signal  opportunities  of  observation,  not  only 
a  good  deal  about  pig  anatomy, — especially  about  the  detached 


41 

edible  parts  of  the  animal,  such  as  the  spleen  and  the  pancreas, 
and  at  least  one  other  very  palatable  viscus  besides, — but  be 
came  knowing  also  about  the  take  and  the  curing  of  herrings. 
All  the  herring-boats  during  the  fishing  season  passed  our  win- 
dows on  their  homeward  way  to  the  harbor ;  and,  from  their 
depth  in  the  water,  we  became  skilful  enough  to  predicate  the 
number  of  crans  aboard  of  each  with  wonderful  judgment  and 
correctness.  In  days  of  good  general  fishings,  too,  when  the 
curing-yards  proved  too  small  to  accommodate  the  quantities 
brought  ashore,  the  fish  used  to  be  laid  in  glittering  heaps  op- 
posite the  school-house  door ;  and  an  exciting  scene,  that  com- 
bined the  bustle  of  the  workshop  with  the  confusion  of  the 
crowded  fair,  would  straightway  spring  up  within  twenty  yards 
of  the  farms  at  which  we  sat,  greatly  to  our  enjoyment,  and, 
of  course,  not  a  little  to  our  instruction.  We  could  see,  sim- 
ply by  peering  over  book  or  slate,  the  curers  going  about  rous- 
ing their  fish  with  salt,  to  counteract  the  effects  of  the  dog-day 
sun  ;  bevies  of  young  women  employed  as  gutters,  and  hor- 
ridly incarnadined  with  blood  and  viscera,  squatting  around 
the  heaps,  knife  in  hand,  and  plying  with  busy  fingers  their 
well-paid  labors,  at  the  rate  of  a  sixpence  per  hour ;  relays 
of  heavily-laden  fish-wives  bringing  ever  and  anon  fresh  heaps 
of  herrings  in  their  creels  ;  and  outside  of  all,  the  coopers 
hammering  as  if  for  life  and  death, — now  tightening  hoops, 
and  now  slackening  them,  and  anon  caulking  with  bullrush 
the  leaky  seems.  It  is  not  every  grammar  school  in  which 
such  lessons  are  taught  as  those,  in  which  all  were  initiated, 
and  in  which  all  became  in  some  degree  accomplished,  in  the 
grammar  school  of  Cromarty  ! 

The  building  in  which  we  met  was  a  low,  long,  straw- 
thatched  cottage,  open  from  gable  to  gable,  with  a  mud  floor 
below,  and  an  unlathed  roof  above ;  and  stretching  along  the 
naked  rafters,  which,  when  the  master  chanced  to  be  absent 
for  a  few  minutes,  gave  noble  exercise  in  climbing,  there  used 
frequently  to  lie  a  helm,  or  oar,  or  boat-hook,  or  even  a  foresail, 
— the  spoil  of  some  hapless  peat-boat  from  the  opposite  side 
of  the  Frith.    The  Highland  boatmen  of  Ross  had  carried  on 


42 

a  trade  «  peats  for  ages  with  the  Saxons  of  the  town  ;  and  as 
every  boat  owed  a  long-derived  perquisite  of  twenty  peats  to 
the  grammar  school,  and  as  payment  was  at  times  foolishly 
refused,  the  party  of  boys  commissioned  by  the  master  to  ex- 
act it  almost  always  succeeded,  either  by  force  or  stratagem,  in 
securing  and  bringing  along  with  them,  in  behalf  of  the  insti- 
tution, some  spar,  or  sail,  or  piece  of  rigging,  which,  until  re- 
deemed by  special  treaty,  and  the  payment  of  the  peats,  was 
stowed  up  over  the  rafters.  These  peat-exhibitions,  which 
were  intensely  popular  in  the  school,  gave  noble  exercise  tc 
the  faculties.  It  was  always  a  great  matter  to  see,  just  as  the 
school  met,  some  observant  boy  appear,  cap  in  hand,  before 
the  master,  and  intimate  the  fact  of  an  arrival  at  the  shore,  by 
the  simple  words,  "  Peat-boat,  Sir."  The  master  would  then 
proceed  to  name  a  party,  more  or  less  numerous,  according  to 
the  exigency  :  but  it  seemed  to  be  matter  of  pretty  correct  cal- 
culation that,  in  the  cases  in  which  the  peat  claim  was  dis- 
puted, it  required  about  twenty  boys  to  bring  home  the  twenty 
peats,  or,  lacking  these,  the  compensatory  sail  or  spar.  There 
were  certain  ill-conditioned  boatmen  who  almost  always  re- 
sisted, and  who  delighted  to  tell  us — invariably,  too,  in  very 
bad  English — that  our  perquisite  was  properly  the  hangman's 
perquisite,  made  over  to  us  because  we  were  like  him  ;  not 
seeing — blockheads  that  they  were  ! — that  the  very  admission 
established  in  full  the  rectitude  of  our  claim,  and  gave  to  us, 
amid  our  dire  perils  and  faithful  contendings,  the  strengthen- 
ing consciousness  of  a  just  quarrel.  In  dealing  with  these  re- 
cusants, we  used  ordinarily  to  divide  our  forces  into  two  bodies, 
the  larger  portion  of  the  party  filling  their  pockets  with  stones, 
and  ranging  themselves  on  some  point  of  vantage,  such  as  the 
pier-head ;  and  the  smaller  stealing  down  as  near  the  boat  as 
possible,  and  mixing  themselves  up  with  the  purchasers  of  the 
peats.  We  then,  after  due  warning  given,  opened  fire  upon 
the  boatmen  ;  and,  when  the  pebbles  were  hopping  about  them 
like  hailstones,  the  boys  below  commonly  succeeded  in  se- 
curing, under  cover  of  the  fire,  the  desired  boathook  or  oar. 
And  such  were  the  ordinary  circumstances  and  details  of  this 


OR,    THE   STORY   OF   MY   EDUCATION.  43 

piece  of  Spartan  education  ;  of  which  a  townsman  has  told  me 
he  was  strongly  reminded  when  boarding,  on  one  occasion, 
under  cover  of  a  well-sustained  discharge  of  musketry,  the 
vessel  of  an  enemy  that  had  been  stranded  on  the  shores  of 
Berbice. 

The  parish  schoolmaster  was  a  scholar  and  an  honest  man, 
and  if  a  boy  really  wished  to  learn,  he  certainly  could  teach 
him.  He  had  attended  the  classes  at  Aberdeen  duiing  the 
same  sessions  as  the  late  Dr.  Mearns,  and  in  mathematics  and 
the  languages  had  disputed  the  prize  with  the  Doctor ;  but  he 
had  failed  to  get  on  equally  well  in  the  world  ;  and  now,  in 
middle  life,  though  a  licentiate  of  the  Church,  he  had  settled 
down  to  be  what  he  subsequently  remained, — the  teacher  of  a 
parish  school.  There  were  usually  a  few  grown-up  lads  under 
his  tuition, — careful  sailors,  that  had  staid  ashore  during  the 
winter  quarter  to  study  navigation  as  a  science, — or  tall  fel 
lows  happy  in  the  patronage  of  the  great,  who,  in  the  hope  of 
being  made  excisemen,  had  come  to  school  to  be  initiated  in 
the  mysteries  of  gauging, — or  grown  young  men,  who,  on 
second  thoughts,  and  somewhat  late  in  the  day,  had  recog 
nized  the  Church  as  their  proper  vocation ;  and  these  used  to 
speak  of  the  master's  acquirements  and  teaching  ability  in  the 
very  highest  terms.  He  himself,  too,  could  appeal  to  the  fact 
that  no  teacher  in  the  north  had  ever  sent  more  students  to 
college,  and  that  his  better  scholars  almost  always  got  on  well 
in  life.  But  then,  or?  the  other  hand,  the  pupils  who  wished  to 
do  nothing, — a  description  of  individuals  that  comprised  fully 
two-thirds  of  all  the  younger  ones, — were  not  required  to  do 
much  more  than  they  wished  ;  and  parents  and  guardians 
were  loud  in  their  complaints  that  he  was  no  suitable  school- 
master for  them ;  though  the  boys  themselves  usually  thought 
him  quite  suitable  enough. 

He  was  in  the  habit  of  advising  the  parents  or  relations  of 
those  he  deemed  his  clever  lads,  to  give  them  a  classical  edu- 
cation ;  and  meeting  one  day  with  Uncle  James,  he  urged  that 
I  should  be  put  on  Latin.  I  was  a  great  reader,  he  said  ;  and 
he  found  that  when  I  missed  a  word  in  my  English  tasks,  1 


i4  MY  SCHOOLS  AND   SCHOOLMASTERS  , 

almost  always  substituted  a  synonym  in  the  place  of  it.  An> 
so,  as  Uncle  James  had  arrived,  on  data  of  his  own,  at  a  simi 
lar  conclusion.  I  was  transferred  from  the  English  to  the  Latin 
form,  and,  with  four  other  boys,  fairly  entered  on  the  "  Rudi- 
ments." I  labored  with  tolerable  diligence  for  a  day  or  two  ; 
but  there  was  no  one  to  tell  me  what  the  rules  meant,  or 
whether  they  really  meant  anything  ;  and  when  I  got  on  as 
far  as  penna,  a  pen,  and  saw  how  the  changes  were  rung  on 
one  poor  word,  that  did  not  seem  to  be  of  more  importance 
in  the  old  language  than  in  the  modern  one,  I  began  miser 
ably  to  flag,  and  to  long  for  my  English  reading,  with  its 
nice  amusing  stories,  and  its  picture-like  descriptions.  The 
Rudiments  was  by  far  the  dullest  book  I  had  ever  seen.  It 
embodied  no  thought  that  I  could  perceive, — it  certainly  con- 
tained no  narrative, — it  was  a  perfect  contrast  to  not  only 
the  "  Life  and  Adventures  of  Sir  William  Wallace,"  but  to 
even  the  Voyages  of  Cook  and  Anson.  None  of  my  class-fel- 
lows were  by  any  means  bright ; — they  had  been  all  set  on 
Latin  without  advice  of  the  master;  and  yet,  when  he  learn- 
ed, which  he  soon  did,  to  distinguish  and  call  us  up  to  our 
tasks  by  the  name  of  the  "  heavy  class,"  I  was,  in  most  in- 
stances, to  be  found  at  its  nether  end.  Shortly  after,  however, 
when  we  got  a  little  farther  on,  it  was  seen  that  I  had  a  de- 
cided turn  for  translation.  The  master,  good  simple  man  that 
he  was,  always  read  to  us  in  English,  as  the  school  met,  the 
piece  of  Latin  given  us  as  our  task  for  the  day  ;  and  as  my 
memory  was  strong  enough  to  carry  away  the  whole  transla- 
tion in  its  order,  I  used  to  give  him  back  in  the  evening,  word 
for  word,  his  own  rendering,  which  satisfied  him  on  most  oc- 
casions tolerably  well.  There  were  none  of  us  much  looked 
after  ;  and  I  soon  learned  to  bring  books  of  amusement  to  the 
sehool  with  me,  which,  amid  the  Babel  confusion  of  the  place, 
I  contrived  to  read  undetected.  Some  of  them,  save  in  the 
language  in  which  they  were  written,  were  almost  identical 
with  the  books  proper  to  the  place.  I  remember  perusing  by 
stealth  in  this  way,  Dryden's  "  Virgil,"  and  the  "  Ovid"  of 
Dryden  and  his  friends  ;  \t  bile  Ovid's  own  "  Ovid,"  and  Vir 


OR,  TflE  STORY   OF  MY  EDUCATION.  45 

gil's  own  "  Virgil,"  lay  beside  me,  sealed  up  in  the  fine  old 
tongue,  which  I  was  thus  throwing  away  my  only  chance  of 
acquiring. 

One  morning,  having  the  master's  English  rendering  of  the 
day's  task  well  fixed  in  my  memory,  and  no  book  of  amuse- 
ment to  read,  I  began  gossiping  with  my  nearest  class-fellow, 
a  very  tall  boy,  who  ultimately  shot  up  into  a  lad  of  six  feet 
four,  and  who  on  most  occasions  sat  beside  me,  as  lowest  in 
the  form  save  one.  I  told  him  about  the  tall  Wallace  and  his 
exploits  ;  and  so  effectually  succeeded  in  awakening  his  curios 
ity,  that  I  had  to  communicate  to  him,  from  beginning  to  end, 
every  adventure  recorded  by  the  blind  minstrel.  My  story- 
telling vocation  once  fairly  ascertained,  there  was,  I  found,  no 
stopping  in  my  course.  I  had  to  tell  all  the  stories  I  had  ever 
heard  or  read  ; — all  my  father's  adventures,  so  far  as  I  knew 
them,  and  all  my  Uncle  Sandy's, — with  the  story  of  Gulliver, 
and  Philip  Quarll,and  Robinson  Crusoe, — of  Sinbad,and  Ulys- 
ses, and  Mrs.  Ratcliffe's  heroine  Emily,  with,  of  course,  the 
love-passages  left  out ;  and  at  length,  after  weeks  and  months 
of  narrative,  I  found  my  available  stock  of  acquired  fact  and 
fiction  fairly  exhausted.  The  demand  on  the  part  of  my  class- 
fellows  was,  however,  as  great  and  urgent  as  ever  ;  and,  set- 
ting myself,  in  the  extremity  of  the  case,  to  try  my  ability  of 
original  production,  I  began  to  dole  out  to  them  by  the  hour 
and  the  diet,  long  extempore  biographies,  which  proved  won- 
derfully popular  and  successful.  My  heroes  were  usually  war- 
riors like  Wallace,  and  voyagers  like  Gulliver,  and  dwellers 
in  desolate  islands  like  Robinson  Crusoe  ;  and  they  had  not 
unfrequently  to  seek  shelter  in  huge  deserted  castles,  abound- 
ing in  trap-doors  and  secret  passages,  like  that  of  Udolpho. 
And  finally,  after  much  destruction  of  giants  and  wild  beasts, 
and  frightful  encounters  with  magicians  and  savages,  they  al- 
most invariably  succeeded  in  disentombing  hidden  treasures  to 
an  enormous  amount,  or  in  laying  open  gold  mines,  and  then 
passed  a  luxurious  old  age,  like  that  of  Sinbad  the  Sailor,  at 
peace  with  all  mankind,  in  the  midst  of  confectionary  and 
fruits.     The  master  had  a  tolerably  correct  notion  of  what  was 


46  MY  SCHOOLS  AND  SCHOOLMASTEKS  ; 

going  on  in  the  "  heavy  class  ;" — the  stretched-out  necks,  and 
the  heads  clustered  together,  always  told  their  own  special 
story  when  I  was  engaged  in  telling  mine  ;  but,  without  hating 
the  child,  he  spared  the  rod,  and  simply  did  what  he  some- 
times allowed  himself  to  do, — bestowed  a  nickname  upon  me. 
I  was  the  Sennachie,  he  said ;  and  as  the  Sennachie  I  might 
have  been  known  so  long  as  I  remained  under  his  charge,  had 
it  not  been  that,  priding  himself  upon  his  Gaelic,  he  used  to 
bestow  upon  the  word  the  full  Celtic  pronunciation,  which,  ; 
agreeing  but  ill  with  the  Teutonic  mouths  of  my  school-fel 
lows,  militated  against  its  use  ;  and  so  the  name  failed  to  take. 
With  all  my  carelessness,  I  continued  to  be  a  sort  of  favorite 
with  the  master  ;  and,  when  at  the  general  English  lesson,  he 
used  to  address  to  me  little  quiet  speeches,  vouchsafed  to  no 
other  pupil,  indicative  of  a  certain  literary  ground  common  to 
us,  on  which  the  others  had  not  entered.  "  That,  Sir,"  he  has 
said,  after  the  class  had  just  perused,  in  the  school  collection, 
a  Tatler,  or  Spectator, — "  That,  Sir,  is  a  good  paper  ; — it's  an 
Addison  ;"  or,  "  That's  one  of  Steele's,  Sir  ;"  and  on  finding  in 
my  copy-book  on  one  occasion,  a  page  filled  with  rhymes, 
which  I  had  headed  "  Poem  on  Care,"  he  brought  it  to  his 
desk,  and,  after  reading  it  carefully  over,  called  me  up,  and 
with  his  closed  penknife,  which  served  as  a  pointer,  in  the  one 
hand,  and  the  copy-book  brought  down  to  the  level  of  my 
eyes  in  the  other,  began  his  criticism.  "  That's  bad  grammar, 
Sir,"  he  said,  resting  the  knife-handle  on  one  of  the  lines ;  "and 
here's  an  ill-spelt  word  ;  and  there's  another  ;  and  you  have 
not  at  all  attended  to  the  punctuation  ; — but  the  general  sense 
of  the  piece  is  good, — very  good,  indeed,  Sir."  And  then  he 
added,  with  a  grim  smile,  "  Care,  Sir,  is,  I  dare  say,  as  you  re- 
mark, a  very  bad  thing  ;  but  you  may  safely  bestow  a  littl 
more  of  it  on  your  spelling  and  your  grammar." 

The  school,  like  almost  all  the  other  grammar-schools  of  the 
period  in  Scotland,  had  its  yearly  cock-fight,  preceded  by  two 
holidays  and  a  half,  during  which  the  boys  occupied  them- 
selves in  collecting  and  bringing  up  their  cocks.  And  such 
always  was  the  array  of  fighting  birds  mustered  on  the  occa- 


OR,    THE    STORY   OF   MY   EDUCATION.  47 

sion,  that  the  day  of  the  festival,  from  morning  till  night,  used 
to  be  spent  in  fighting  out  the  battle.  For  weeks  after  it  had 
passed,  the  school-floor  would  continue  to  retain  its  deeply- 
stained  blotches  of  blood,  and  the  boys  would  be  full  of  ex- 
citing narratives  regarding  the  glories  of  gallant  birds,  who  had 
continued  to  fight  until  both  their  eyes  had  been  picked  out,  or 
who,  in  the  moment  of  victory,  had  dropped  dead  in  the  middle 
of  the  cock-pit.  The  yearly  fight  was  the  relic  of  a  barbarous 
age  ;  and,  in  at  least  one  of  its  provisions,  there  seemed  evi- 
dence that  it  was  that  of  an  intolerant  age  also ;  every  pupil 
at  school,  without  exception,  had  his  name  entered  on  the 
subscription-list  as  a  cock-fighter,  and  was  obliged  to  pay  the 
master  at  the  rate  of  twopence  per  head,  ostensibly  for  leave 
to  bring  his  birds  to  the  pit ;  but,  amid  the  growing  humani- 
ties of  a  better  time,  though  the  twopence  continued  to  be  ex- 
acted, it  was  no  longer  imperative  to  bring  the  birds  ;  and, 
availing  myself  of  the  liberty,  I  never  brought  any.  Nor,  save 
for  a  few  minutes,  on  two  several  occasions,  did  I  ever  attend 
the  fight.  Had  the  combat  been  one  among  the  boys  them- 
selves, I  would  readily  enough  have  done  my  part,  by  meeting 
with  any  opponent  of  my  years  and  standing  ;  but  I  could  not 
bear  to  look  at  the  bleeding  birds.  And  so  I  continued  to  pay 
my  yearly  sixpence,  as  a  holder  of  three  cocks, — the  lowest 
sum  deemed  in  any  degree  genteel, — but  remained  simply  a 
fictitious  or  paper  cock-fighter,  and  contributed  in  no  degree 
to  the  success  of  the  head-stock  or  leader,  to  whose  party,  in 
the  general  division  of  the  school,  it  was  my  lot  to  fall. 
Neither,  I  must  add,  did  I  learn  to  take  an  interest  in  the 
sacrificial  orgies  of  the  adjoining  slaughter-house.  A  few  of 
the  chosen  schoolboys  were  permitted  by  the  killers  to  exer- 
cise at  times  the  privilege  of  knocking  down  a  pig,  and  even, 
on  rare  occasions,  to  essay  the  sticking  ;  but  I  turned  with 
horror  from  both  processes  ;  and  if  I  drew  near  at  all,  it  was 
only  when  some  animal,  scraped  and  cleaned,  and  suspended 
from  the  beam,  was  in  the  course  of  being  laid  open  by  the 
butcher's  knife,  that  I  might  mark  the  forms  of  the  viscera, 
and  the  positions  which  they  occupied.     To  my  dislike  of  the 


48  MY  SCHOOLS  AND   SCHOOLMASTERS' 

annual  cock-fight  my  uncles  must  have  contributed.  They 
were  loud  in  their  denunciation  of  the  enormity  ;  and  on  one 
occasion,  when  a  neighbor  was  unlucky  enough  to  remark, 
in  extenuation,  that  the  practice  had  been  handed  down  to 
us  by  pious  and  excellent  men,  who  seemed  to  see  nothing 
wrong  in  it,  I  saw  their  habitual  respect  for  the  old  divines 
give  way,  for  at  least  a  moment.  Uncle  Sandy  hesitated 
mder  apparent  excitement;  but  quick  and  fiery  as  light- 
ing, Uncle  James  came  to  his  rescue.  "Yes,  excellent 
ncn  !"  said  my  uncle,  "  but  the  excellent  men  of  a  rude  and 
barbarous  age  ;  and,  in  some  parts  of  their  character,  tinged 
by  its  barbarity.  For  the  cock-fight  which  these  excellent 
men  have  bequeathed  to  us  they  ought  to  have  been  sent 
to  Bridewell  for  a  week,  and  fed  upon  bread  and  water." 
Uncle  James  was,  no  doubt,  over  hasty,  and  felt  so  a  minute 
after  ;  but  the  practice  of  fixing  the  foundation  of  ethics  on 
a  They  themselves  did  it,  much  after  the  manner  in  which  the 
Schoolmen  fixed  the  foundations  of  their  nonsensical  philo- 
sophy on  a  "  He  himself  said  it,"  is  a  practice  which,  though 
not  yet  exploded  in  even  very  pure  Churches,  is  always  pro- 
voking, and  not  quite  free  from  peril  to  the  worthies,  whether 
dead  or  alive,  in  whose  precedents  the  moral  right  is  made  to 
rest.  In  the  class  of  minds  represented  among  the  people  by 
that  of  Uncle  James,  for  instance,  it  would  be  much  easier  to 
bring  down  even  the  old  divines,  than  to  bring  up  cock-fight- 
ing. 
^  My  native  town  had  possessed,  for  at  least  an  age  or  two 
previous  to  that  of  my  boyhood,  its  moiety  of  intelligent,  book- 
consulting  mechanics  and  tradesfolk ;  and  as  my  acquaintance 
gradually  extended  among  their  representatives  and  descend- 
ants,. I  was  permitted  to  rummage,  in  the  pursuit  of  knowl- 
edge, delightful  old  chests  and  cupboards,  filled  with  tattered 
and  dusty  volumes.  The  moiety  of  my  father's  library  which 
remained  to  me  consisted  of  about  sixty  several  works ;  my 
uncles  possessed  about  a  hundred  and  fifty  more  ;  and  there 
was  a  literary  cabinetmaker  in  the  neighborhood,  who  had 
once  actually  composed  a  poem  of  thirty  lines  on  the  Hill  of 


49 

Cromarty,  whose  collection  of  books,  chiefly  poetical,  amount- 
ed to  from  about  eighty  to  a  hundred.  I  used  to  be  often  at 
nights  in  the  workshop  of  the  cabinetmaker,  and  was  some- 
times privileged  to  hear  him  repeat  his  poem.  There  was  not 
much  admiration  of  poets  or  poetry  in  the  place  ;  and  my 
praise,  though  that  of  a  very  young  critic,  had  always  the 
double  merit  of  being  both  ample  and  sincere.  I  knew  the 
very  rocks  and  trees  which  his  description  embraced — had 
heard  the  birds  to  which  he  referred,  and  seen  the  flowers; 
and  as  the  hill  had  been  of  old  a  frequent  scene  of  execu- 
tions, and  had  borne  the  gallows  of  the  sheriffdom  on  its  crest, 
nothing  could  be  more  definite  than  the  grave  reference,  in  his 
opening  line,  to 

"The  verdant  rising  of  the  Galloic-h'itt." 

And  so  I  thought  a  very  great  deal  of  his  poem,  and  what  I 
thought  I  said  ;  and  he,  on  the  other  hand,  evidently  regarded 
me  as  a  lad  of  extraordinary  taste  and  discernment  for  my 
years.  There  was  another  mechanic  in  the  neighborhood, — 
a  house-carpenter,  who,  though  not  a  poet,  was  deeply  read 
in  books  of  all  kinds,  from  the  plays  of  Farquhar  to  the  ser- 
mons of  Flavel ;  and  as  both  his  father  and  grandfather, — the 
latter,  by  the  way,  a  Porteous-mob  man,  and  the  former  a  per- 
sonal friend  of  poor  Fergusson,  the  poet, — had  also  been  read- 
ers and  collectors  of  books,  he  possessed  a  whole  pressful  of 
tattered,  hard-working  volumes,  some  of  them  very  curious 
ones ;  and  to  me  he  liberally  extended,  what  literary  men 
always  value,  "  the  full  freedom  of  the  press."  But  of  all  my 
occasional  benefactors  in  this  way,  by  far  the  greatest  was 
poor  old  Francie,  the  retired  clerk  and  supercargo. 

Francie  was  naturally  a  man  of  fair  talent  and  active  curios 
ity.  Nor  was  he  by  any  means  deficient  in  acquirement. 
He  wrote  and  figured  well,  and  knew  a  good  deal  about  a 
least  the  theory  of  business;  and  when  articled  in  early  life 
to  a  Cromarty  merchant  and  shopkeeper,  it  was  with  tolerably 
fair  prospects  of  getting  on  in  the  world.  He  had,  however, 
a  certain  infirmity  of  brain   which  rendered  both  talent  and 


50  MY  SCHOOLS  AND  SCHOOLMASTERS; 

acquirement  of  but  little  avail,  and  that  began  to  manifest 
itself  very  early.  While  yet  an  apprentice,  on  ascertaining 
that  the  way  was  clear,  he  used,  though  grown  a  tall  lad,  to  bolt 
out  from  behind  the  counter  into  the  middle  of  a  green  directly 
opposite,  and  there,  joining  in  the  sports  of  some  group  of 
youngsters,  which  the  place  rarely  wanted,  he  would  play  out 
half  a  game  at  marbles,  or  honey -pots,  or  hy-spy,  and  when  he 
saw  his  master  or  a  customer  approaching,  bolt  back  again 
The  thing  was  not  deemed  seemly  ;  but  Francie,  when  spoken 
to  on  the  subject,  could  speak  as  sensibly  as  any  young  person 
of  his  years.  He  needed  relaxation,  he  used  to  say,  though 
he  never  suffered  it  to  interfere  with  his  proper  business  ;  and 
where  was  safer  relaxation  to  be  found  than  among  innocent 
children  1  This,  of  course,  was  eminently  rational  and  virtu- 
ous. And  so,  when  his  term  of  apprenticeship  had  expired, 
Francie  was  despatched,  not  without  hope  of  success,  to  New- 
foundland,— where  he  had  relations  extensively  engaged  in  the 
fishing  trade, — to  serve  as  one  of  their  clerks.  He  was  found 
to  be  a  competent  clerk ;  but  unluckily  there  was  but  little 
known  of  the  interior  of  the  island  at  the  time,  and  some  of 
the  places  most  distant  from  St.  John's,  such  as  the  Bay  and 
River  of  Exploits,  bore  tempting  names ;  and  so,  after  Francie 
had  made  many  inquiries  of  the  older  inhabitants  regarding 
what  was  to  be  seen  amid  the  scraggy  brushwood  and  broken 
rocks  of  the  inner  country,  a  morning  came  in  which  he  was 
reported  missing  at  the  office ;  and  little  else  could  be  learned 
respecting  him,  than  that  at  early  dawn  he  had  been  seen  setting 
out  for  the  woods,  provided  with  staff  and  knapsack.  He 
returned  in  about  a  week,  worn  out  and  half-starved.  He  had 
not  been  so  successful  as  he  had  anticipated,  he  said,  in  pro- 
viding himself  by  the  way  with  food,  and  so  he  had  to  turn 
back  ere  he  could  reach  the  point  on  which  he  had  previously 
determined  ;  but  he  was  sure  he  would  be  happier  in  his  next 
journey.  It  was  palpably  unsafe  to  suffer  him  to  remain  ex- 
posed to  the  temptation  of  an  unexplored  country  ;  and  as  his 
friends  and  superiors  at  St.  John's  had  just  laden  a  vessel  with 
fish  for  the   tal.'an  market  during  Lent,  Francie  was  despatch* 


OR,   THE   STORY   OF   MY   EDUCATION.  61 

ed  with  her  as  supercargo,  to  look  after  the  sales,  in  a  land  of 
which  every  footbreaclth  had  been  familiar  to  men  for  thou- 
sands  of  years,  and  in  which  it  was  supposed  he  would  have 
no  inducement  to  wander.  Francie,  however,  had  read  much 
about  Italy  ;  and  finding,  on  landing  at  Leghorn,  that  he  was 
within  a  short  distance  of  Pisa,  he  left  ship  and  cargo  to  take 
care  of  themselves,  and  set  out  on  foot  to  see  the  famous  hang- 
ing tower,  and  the  great  marble  cathedral.  And  tower  and 
cathedral  he  did  see  :  but  it  was  meanwhile  found  that  he  was 
not  quite  suited  for  a  supercargo,  and  he  had  shortly  after  to 
return  to  Scotland,  where  his  friends  succeeded  in  establishing 
him  in  the  capacity  of  clerk  and  overseer  upon  a  small  prop- 
erty in  Forfarshire,  which  wras  farmed  by  the  proprietor  on 
what  was  then  the  newly-introduced  modern  system.  He  was 
acquainted,  however,  with  the  classical  description  of  Glammis 
Castle,  in  the  letters  of  the  poet  Gray ;  and  after  visiting  the 
castle,  he  set  out  to  examine  the  ancient  encampment  at  Ar- 
doch, — the  Lxndum  of  the  Romans.  Finally,  all  hopes  of 
getting  him  settled  at  a  distance  being  given  up  by  his  friends, 
he  had  to  fall  back  upon  Cromarty,  where  he  was  yet  once 
more  appointed  to  a  clerkship.  The  establishment  with  which 
he  was  now  connected  was  a  large  hempen  manufactory ;  and 
it  was  his  chief  employment  to  register  the  quantities  of  hemp 
given  out  to  the  spinners,  and  the  number  of  hanks  of  yarn 
into  which  they  had  converted  it,  when  given  in.  He  soon, 
however,  began  to  take  long  walks  ;  and  the  old  women,  with 
their  yarn,  would  be  often  found  accumulated,  ere  his  return, 
by  tens  and  dozens  at  the  office-door.  At  length,  after  taking 
a  very  long  walk  indeed,  for  it  stretched  from  near  the  open- 
ing to  the  head  of  the  Cromarty  Frith,  a  distance  of  about 
twenty  miles,  and  included  in  its  survey  the  antique  tower  of 
Kinkell  and  the  old  Castle  of  Craighouse,  he  was  relieved  from 
the  duties  of  his  clerkship,  and  left  to  pursue  his  researches 
undisturbed,  on  a  small  annuity,  the  gift  of  his  friends.  He 
was  considerably  advanced  in  life  ere  I  knew  him,  profoundly 
grave,  and  very  taciturn,  and,  though  he  never  discussed  poli- 
tics, a  mighty  reader  of  the  newspapers.     "  Oh  T  this  is  ter- 


62  MY  SCHOOLS  AND  SCHOOLMASTERS; 

rible,"  I  have  heard  him  exclaim,  when  on  one  occasion  a 
snow  storm  had  blocked  up  both  the  coast  and  the  Highland 
roads  for  a  week  together,  and  arrested  the  northward  course 
of  the  ma  Is, — "  It  is  terrible  to  be  left  in  utter  ignorance  of 
the  public  business  of  the  country  !" 

Francie,  whom  every  one  called  Mr. ,  to  his  face,  and 

always  Francie  when  his  back  was  turned,  chiefly  because  h 
was  known  that  he  was  punctilious  on  the  point,  and  did  not 
like  the  more  familiar  term,  used  in  the  winter  evenings  to  be 
a  regular  member  of  the  circle  that  met  beside  my  Uncle 
James's  work-table.  And,  chiefly  through  the  influence,  in  the 
first  instance,  of  my  uncles,  I  was  permitted  to  visit  him  in  his 
own  room, — a  privilege  enjoyed  by  scarce  any  one  else, — and 
even  invited  to  borrow  his  books.  His  room — a  dark  and  mel- 
ancholy chamber,  gray  with  dust — always  contained  a  number 
of  curious  but  not  very  rare  things,  which  he  had  picked  up 
in  his  walks, — prettily  colored  fungi, — vegetable  monstrosi- 
ties of  the  commoner  kind,  such  as  "  fause  craws'  nests,"  and 
flattened  twigs  of  pine, — and  with  these,  as  the  representatives 
of  another  department  of  natural  science,  fragments  of  semi- 
transparent  quartz  or  of  glittering  feldspar,  and  sheets  of  mica 
a  little  above  the  ordinary  size.  But  the  charm  of  the  apart- 
ment lay  in  its  books.  Francie  was  a  book-fancier,  and 
lacked  only  the  necessary  wealth  to  be  in  the  possession  of  a 
very  pretty  collection.  As  it  was,  he  had  some  curious  vol- 
umes ;  among  others,  a  first-edition  copy  of  the  "  Nineteen 
Years'  Travels  of  William  Lithgow,"  with  an  ancient  wood- 
cut, representing  the  said  William  in  the  background,  with 
his  head  brushing  the  skies,  and,  far  in  front,  two  of  the  tombs 
which  covered  the  heroes  of  Ilium,  barely  tall  enough  to  reach 
half-way  to  his  knee,  and  of  the  length,  in  proportion  to  the 
size  of  the  traveller,  of  ordinary  octavo  volumes.  He  had 
black-letter  books,  too,  on  astrology,  and  on  the  planetary 
properties  of  vegetables ;  and  an  ancient  book  on  medicine, 
that  recommended  as  a  cure  for  the  toothache  a  bit  of  the  jaw 
of  a  suicide,  well  triturated  ;  and,  as  an  infallible  remedy  for  the 
falling- sickness,  an  ounce  or  two  of  the  brains  of  a  young  man, 


53 

carefully  dried  over  the  fire.  Better,  however,  than  these,  for 
at  least  my  purposes,  he  had  a  tolerably  complete  collection 
of  the  British  essayists,  from  Addison  to  Mackenzie,  with  the 
"  Essays  "  and  "  Citizen  of  the  World  "  of  Goldsmith  ;  several 
interesting  works  of  travels  and  voyages,  translated  from  the 
French ;  and  translations  from  the  German,  of  Lavater,  Zim- 
merman, and  Klopstock.  He  had  a  good  many  v">f  the  minor 
poets  too ;  and  I  was  enabled  to  cultivate,  mainly  from  his 
collection,  a  tolerably  adequate  acquaintance  with  the  wits  of 
the  reign  of  Queen  Anne.  Poor  Francie  was  at  bottom  a 
kindly  and  honest  man ;  but  the  more  intimately  one  knew 
him,  the  more  did  the  weakness  and  brokenness  of  his  intellect 
appear.  His  mind  was  a  labyrinth  without  a  clue,  in  whose 
recesses  there  lay  stored  up  a  vast  amount  of  book-knowl- 
edge, that  could  never  be  found  when  wanted,  and  was  of  no 
sort  of  use  to  himself  or  any  one  else.  I  got  sufficiently  into 
his  confidence  to  be  informed,  under  the  seal  of  strict  secrecy, 
that  he  contemplated  producing  a  great  literary  work,  whose 
special  character  he  had  not  quite  determined,  but  which  was 
to  be  begun  a  few  years  hence.  And  when  death  found  him, 
at  an  age  which  did  not  fall  short  of  the  allotted  three  score 
and  ten,  the  great  unknown  work  was  still  an  undefined  idea, 
and  had  still  to  be  begun. 

There  were  several  other  branches  of  my  education  going 
on  at  this  time,  outside  the  pale  of  the  school,  in  which,  though 
I  succeeded  in  amusing  myself,  I  was  no  trifler.  The  shores 
of  Cromarty  are  strewed  over  with  water-rolled  fragments  of 
the  primary  rocks,  derived  chiefly  from  the  west  during  the 
ages  of  the  boulder  clay;  and  I  soon  learned  to  take  a  deep  inter- 
est in  sauntering  over  the  various  pebble-beds  when  shaken 
up  by  recent  storms,  and  in  learning  to  distinguish  their  nu- 
merous components.  But  I  was  sadly  in  want  of  a  vocabulary  ; 
and  as,  according  to  Cowper,  "  the  growth  of  what  is  excellent 
is  slow,"  it  was  not  until  long  after  that  I  bethought  me  of  the 
obvious  enough  expedient  of  representing  the  various  species 
of  simple  rocks  by  certain  numerals,  and  the  compound  ones 
by  the  numerals  representative  of  each  separate  component, 


54 

ranged,  as  in  vulgar  fractions,  along  a  medial  line,  with  the 
figures  representative  of  the  prevailing  materials  of  the  mass 
above,  and  those  representative  of  the  materials  in  less  pro- 
portions below.  Though,  however,  wholly  deficient  in  the  signs 
proper  to  represent  what  I  knew,  I  soon  acquired  a  consider- 
able quickness  of  eye  in  distinguishing  the  various  kinds  of 
rock,  and  tolerably  definite  conceptions  of  the  generic  character 
of  the  porphyries,  granites,  gneisses,  quartz-rocks,  clay-slates, 
and  mica-schists,  which  everywhere  strewed  the  beach.  In  the 
rocks  of  mechanical  origin  I  was  at  the  time  much  less  inter- 
ested ;  but  in  individual,  as  in  general  history,  mineralogy 
almost  always  precedes  geology.  I  was  fortunate  enough  to 
discover,  one  happy  morning,  among  the  lumber  and  debris  of 
old  John  Feddes  dark  room,  an  antique-fashioned  hammer, 
which  had  belonged,  my  mother  told  me,  to  old  John  himself 
more  than  a  hundred  years  before.  It  was  an  uncouth  sort  of 
implement,  writh  a  handle  of  strong  black  oak,  and  a  short, 
compact  head,  square  on  the  one  face  and  oblong  on  the  other. 
And  though  it  dealt  rather  an  obtuse  blow,  the  temper  was 
excellent,  and  the  haft  firmly  set ;  and  I  went  about  with  it, 
breaking  into  all  manner  of  stones,  with  great  perseverance 
and  success.  I  found,  in  a  large-grained  granite,  a  few  sheets 
of  beautiful  black  mica,  that  when  split  exceedingly  thin,  and 
pasted  between  slips  of  mica  of  the  ordinary  kind,  made  ad- 
mirably-colored eye-glasses,  that  converted  the  landscapes 
around  into  richly-toned  drawings  in  sepia ;  and  numerous 
crystals  of  garnet  embedded  in  mica-schist,  that  were,  I  was 
sure,  identical  with  the  stones  set  in  a  little  gold  brooch,  the 
property  of  my  mother.  To  this  last  surmise,  however, 
some  of  the  neighbors  to  whom  I  showed  my  prize  demurred. 
The  stones  in  my  mother's  brooch  were  precious  stones,  they 
said ;  whereas  what  I  had  found,  wras  merely  a  "  stone  upon 
the  shore."  My  friend  the  cabinetmaker  wTent  so  far  as  to  say 
that  the  specimen  was  but  a  mass  of  plum-pudding  stone,  and 
Its  dark-colored  enclosures  simply  the  currants ;  but  then,  on 
the  other  hand,  Uncle  Sandy  took  my  view  of  the  matter : 
the  stone  was  not  plum-pudding  stone,  he  said :  he  had  often 


OR,  THE  STORY  OF  MY  EDUCATION.  55 

seen  plum-pudding  stone  in  England,  had  knew  it  to  be  a  sort 
of  rough  conglomerate  of  various  components  ;  whereas  my 
stone  was  composed  of  a  finely-grained  silvery  substance,  and 
the  crystals  which  it  contained  were,  he  was  sure,  gems  like 
those  in  the  brooch,  and,  so  far  as  he  could  judge,  real  gar- 
nets. This  was  a  great  decision ;  and,  much  encouraged  in 
consequence,  I  soon  ascertained  that  garnets  are  by  no  means 
rare  among  the  pebbles  of  the  Cromarty  shore.  Nay,  so  mix. 
ed  up  are  they  with  its  sands  even, — a  consequence  of  the 
abundance  of  the  mineral  among  the  primary  rocks  of  Ross. 
— that  after  a  heavy  surf  has  beaten  the  exposed  beach  of  the 
neighboring  hill,  there  may  be  found  on  it  patches  of  commi- 
nuted garnet,  from  one  to  three  square  yards  in  extent,  that 
resemble,  at  a  little  distance,  pieces  of  crimson  carpeting,  and 
nearer  at  hand  sheets  of  crimson  bead-work,  and  of  which  al- 
most every  point  and  particle  is  a  gem.  From  some  unex- 
plained circumstance,  connected  apparently  with  the  specific 
gravity  of  the  substance,  it  separates  in  this  style  from  the 
general  mass,  on  coasts  much  beaten  by  the  waves ;  but  the 
garnets  of  these  curious  pavements,  though  so  exceedingly 
abundant,  are  in  every  instance  exceedingly  minute.  I  never 
detected  in  them  a  fragment  greatly  larger  than  a  pin-head  ; 
but  it  was  always  with  much  delight  that  I  used  to  fling  my- 
self down  on  the  shore  beside  some  newly-discovered  patch, 
and  bethink  me,  as  I  passed  my  fingers  along  the  larger  grains, 
of  the  heaps  of  gems  in  Aladdin's  cavern,  or  of  Sinbad's  val- 
ley of  diamonds. 

The  Hill  of  Cromarty  formed  at  this  time  at  once  my  true 
school  and  favorite  play-ground  ;  and  if  my  master  did  wink 
at  times  harder  than  master  ought,  when  I  was  playing  truant 
among  its  woods  or  on  its  shores,  it  was,  I  believe,  whether  he 
thought  so  or  no,  all  for  the  best.  My  Uncle  Sandy  had,  as  1 
Have  already  said,  been  bred  a  cartwright ;  but  finding,  on  his 
return,  after  his  seven  years'  service  aboard  man-of-war,  that 
the  place  had  cartwrights  enough  for  all  the  employment,  he 
applied  himself  to  the  humble  but  not  unremunerative  pro- 
fession of  a  sawyer,  and  used  often  \o  pitch  his  saw-pit,  in  the 


56  MT  SCHOOLS   AND   SCHOOLMASTERS; 

more  genial  seasons  of  the  year,  among  the  woods  of  the  hill. 
I  remember,  he  never  failed  setting  it  down  in  some  pretty 
spot,  sheltered  from  the  prevailing  winds  under  the  lee  of 
some  fern-covered  rising  ground,  or  some  bosky  thicket,  and 
always  in  the  near  neighborhood  of  a  spring  ;  and  it  used  to 
be  one  of  my  most  delightful  exercises  to  find  out  for  myself 
among  the  thick  woods,  in  some  holiday  journey  of  explora- 
tion, the  place  of  a  newly-formed  pit.  With  the  saw-pit  as 
my  base-line  of  operations,  and  secure  always  of  a  share  in 
Uncle  Sandy's  dinner,  I  used  to  make  excursions  of  discovery 
on  every  side, — now  among  the  thicker  tracks  of  wood,  which 
bore  among  the  town-boys,  from  the  twilight  gloom  that  ever 
rested  in  their  recesses,  the  name  of"  the  dungeons ;"  and  anon 
to  the  precipitous  sea-shore,  with  its  wild  cliffs  and  caverns. 
The  Hill  of  Cromarty  is  one  of  a  chain  belonging  to  the  great 
Ben  Nevis  line  of  elevation  ;  and,  though  it  occurs  in  a  sand- 
stone district,  is  itself  a  huge  primary  mass,  upheaved  of  old 
from  the  abyss,  and  composed  chiefly  of  granitic  gneiss  and  a 
red  splintery  hornstone.  It  contains  also  numerous  veins  and 
beds  of  hornblend-rock  and  chlorite-schist,  and  of  a  peculiar- 
looking  granite,  of  which  the  quartz  is  white  as  milk,  and  the 
feldspar  red  as  blood.  When  still  wet  by  the  receding  tide, 
these  veins  and  beds  seem  as  if  highly  polished,  and  present 
a  beautiful  aspect ;  and  it  was  always  with  great  delight  that 
I  used  to  pick  my  way  among  them,  hammer  in  hand,  and 
fill  my  pockets  with  specimens. 

There  was  one  locality  which  I  in  especial  loved.  No  path 
runs  the  way.  On  the  one  side  an  abrupt  iron-tinged  pro- 
montory, so  remarkable  for  its  human-like  profile,  that  it  seems 
part  of  a  half-buried  sphynx,  protrudes  into  the  deep  green 
water.  On  the  other, — less  prominent,  for  even  at  full  tide 
the  traveller  can  wind  between  its  base  and  the  sea, — there 
rises  a  shattered  and  ruinous  precipice,  seamed  with  blood-red 
ironstone,  that  retains  on  its  surface  the  bright  metallic  gleam, 
and  amid  wh;se  piles  of  loose  and  fractured  rock  one  may  still 
detect  fragments  of  stalactite.  The  stalactite  is  all  that  remains 
of  a  spacious  cavern,  which  once  hollowed  the  precipice,  but 


OR,    THE   STORY  OF  MY   EDUCATION.  57 

which,  more  than  a  hundred  years  before,  had  tumbled  down 
during  a  thunder-storm,  when  filled  with  a  flock  of  sheep,  and 
penned  up  the  poor  creatures  forever.  The  space  between 
these  headlands  forms  an  irregular  crescent  of  great  height, 
covered  with  wood  a-top,  and  amid  whose  lichened  crags,  and 
on  whose  steep  slopes,  the  hawthorn,  and  bramble,  and  A'ild- 
rasp,  and  rock-strawberry,  take  root,  with  many  a  scraggy 
shrub  and  sweet  wild  flower  besides  ;  while  along  its  base 
lie  huge  blocks  of  green  hornblend,  on  a  rude  pavement  of 
granitic  gneiss,  traversed  at  one  point,  for  many  rods,  by  a 
broad  vein  of  milk-white  quartz.  The  quartz  vein  formed  my 
central  point  of  attraction  in  this  wild  paradise.  The  white 
stone,  thickly  traversed  by  threads  of  purple  and  red,  is  a 
beautiful  though  unworkable  rock  ;  and  I  soon  ascertained  that 
it  is  flanked  by  a  vein  of  feldspar  broader  than  itself,  of  a 
brick-red  tint,  and  the  red  stone  flanked,  in  turn,  by  a  drab- 
colored  vein  of  the  same  mineral,  in  which  there  occurs  in 
great  abundance  masses  of  a  homogeneous  mica, — mica  not 
existing  in  lamina,  but,  if  I  may  use  the  term,  as  a  sort  of  mi- 
caceous felt.  It  would  almost  seem  as  if  some  gigantic  exper- 
imenter of  the  old  world  had  set  himself  to  separate  into  their 
simple  mineral  components  the  granitic  rocks  of  the  hill,  and 
that  the  three  parallel  veins  were  the  results  of  his  labor. 
Such,  however,  was  not  the  sort  of  idea  which  they  at  this  time 
suggested  to  me.  I  had  read  in  Sir  Walter  Raleigh's  voyage 
to  Guinea,  the  poetic  description  of  that  upper  country  in  which 
the  knight's  exploration  of  the  river  Corale  terminated,  and 
where,  amid  lovely  prospects  of  rich  valleys,  and  wooded  hills, 
and  winding  waters,  almost  every  rock  bore  on  its  surface  the 
yellow  gleam  of  gold.  True,  according  to  the  voyager,  the 
precious  metal  was  itself  absent.  But  Sir  Walter,  on  after- 
wards showing  "  some  of  the  stones  to  a  Spaniard  of  the  Ca- 
raccas,  was  told  by  him  they  were  el  madre  del  ora,  that  is, 
the  mother  of  gold,  and  that  the  mine  itself  was  farther  in  the 
ground."  And  though  the  quartz  vein  of  the  Cromarty  Hill 
contained  no  metal  more  precious  than  iron,  and  but  little 
even  of  that,  it  was,  I  felt  sure  the  " mother'  of  something 


58  MY  SCHOOLS  AND  SCHOOLMASTERS  ; 

very  fine.  As  for  silver,  I  was  pretty  certain  I  had  found  the 
"  mother"  of  it,  if  not  indeed  the  precious  metal  itself,  in  a 
cherty  boulder,  inclosing  numerous  cubes  of  rich  galena ;  and 
occasional  masses  of  iron  pyrites  gave,  as  I  thought,  large 
promise  of  gold.  But  though  sometimes  asked,  in  humble 
irony,  by  the  farm  servants  who  came  to  load  their  carts  with 
sea-weed  along  the  Cromarty  beach,  whether  I  was  "  getting 
siller  in  the  stanes,"  I  was  so  unlucky  as  never  to  be  able  to 
answer  their  question  in  the  affirmative. 


OR.  THE  STOEY  OF  MY  EDUCATION.  59 


CHAPTER    IV 


w  Strange  marble  stones,  here  larger  and  there  less, 
And  of  full  various  forms,  which  still  increase 
In  height  and  bulk  by  a  continual  drop, 
Which  upon  each  distilling  from  the  top, 
And  falling  still  exactly  on  the  crown, 
There  break  themselves  to  mists,  which,  trickling  down, 
Crust  into  stone,  and  (but  with  leisure)  swell 
The  sides,  and  still  advance  the  miracle." 

Charles  Cotton. 


It  is  low  water  in  the  Frith  of  Cromarty  during  stream  tides, 
between  six  and  seven  o'clock  in  the  evening ;  and  my  Uncle 
Sandy,  in  returning  from  his  work  at  the  close  of  the  day, 
used  not  unfrequently,  when,  according  to  the  phrase  of  the 
place,  "  there  was  a  tide  in  the  water,"  to  strike  down  the  hill- 
side, and  spend  a  quiet  hour  in  the  ebb.  I  delighted  to  accom- 
pany him  on  these  occasions.  There  are  Professors  of  Natu- 
ral History  that  know  less  of  living  nature  than  was  known 
by  Uncle  Sandy  ;  and  I  deemed  it  no  small  matter  to  have  all 
the  various  productions  of  the  sea  with  which  he  was  acquaint- 
ed pointed  out  to  me  in  these  walks,  and  to  be  put  in  possess- 
ion of  his  many  curious  anecdotes  regarding  them. 

lie  was  a  skilful  crab  and  lobster  fisher,  and  knew  every 
hole  and  crannie,  along  several  miles  of  rocky  shore,  in  which 
the  creatures  were  accustomed  to  shelter,  with  not  a  few  of 
their  own  peculiarities  of  character.  Contrary  to  the  view 
taken  by  some  of  our  naturalists,  such  as  Agassiz,  who  held 
4 


60  MY   SCHOOLS   AND   SCHOOLMASTERS; 

that  the  crab — a  genus  comparatively  recent  in  its  appearance 
in  creation — is  less  embryotic  in  its  character,  and  higher  in 
its  standing,  than  the  more  ancient  lobster,  my  uncle  regarded 
the  lobster  as  a  more  intelligent  animal  than  the  crab.  The 
hole  in  which  the  lobster  lodges  has  almost  always  two  open 
ing-s,  he  has  said,  through  one  of  which  it  sometimes  contrives 
to  escape  when  the  other  is  stormed  by  the  fisher ;  whereas  the 
crab  is  usually  content,  like  the  "  rat  devoid  of  soul,"  with  a 
lole  of  only  one  opening ;  and,  besides,  gets  so  angry  in  most 
♦ases  with  his  assailant,  as  to  become  more  bent  on  assault 
than  escape,  and  so  loses  himself  through  sheer  loss  of  temper. 
And  yet  the  crab  has,  he  used  to  add,  some  points  of  intelli- 
gence about  him  too.  "When,  as  sometimes  happened,  he  got 
hold,  in  his  dark  narrow  recess  in  the  rock,  of  some  luckless 
digit,  my  uncle  showed  me  how  that  after  the  first  tremendous 
squeeze  he  began  always  to  experiment  upon  what  he  had  got, 
by  alternately  slackening  and  straitening  his  grasp,  as  if  to  as- 
certain whether  it  had  life  in  it,  or  was  merely  a  piece  of  dead 
matter ;  and  that  the  only  way  to  escape  him,  on  these  trying 
occasions,  was  to  let  the  finger  lie  passively  between  his  nip- 
pers, as  if  it  were  a  bit  of  stick  or  tangle  ;  when,  apparently 
deeming  it  such,  he  would  be  sure  to  let  it  go  ;  whereas,  on 
the  least  attempt  to  withdraw  it,  he  would  at  once  straiten  his 
gripe,  and  not  again  relax  it  for  mayhap  half  an  hour.  In 
dealing  with  the  lobster,  on  the  other  hand,  the  fisher  had  to 
beware  that  he  did  not  depend  too  much  on  the  hold  he  had 
got  of  the  creature,  if  it  was  merely  a  hold  of  one  of  the  great 
claws.  For  a  moment  it  would  remain  passive  in  his  grasp ; 
he  would  then  be  sensible  of  a  slight  tremor  in  the  captured 
limb,  and  mayhap  hear  a  slight  crackle ;  and,  presto,  the  cap 
tive  would  straightway  be  off  like  a  dart  through  the  deep- 
water  hole,  and  only  the  limb  remain  in  the  fisher's  hand.  My 
uncle  has,  however,  told  me,  that  lobsters  do  not  always  lose 
their  limbs  with  the  necessary  judgment.  They  throw  them 
off  when  suddenly  frightened,  without  first  waiting  to  consider 
whether  the  sacrifice  of  a  pair  of  legs  is  the  best  mode  of  ob- 
viating the  danger.     On  firing  a  musket  immediately  over  a 


61 

lobster  just  captured,  he  has  seen  it  throw  off  both  its  great 
claws  in  the  sudden  extremity  of  its  terror,  just  as  a  panic- 
struck  soldier  sometimes  throws  away  his  weapons.  Such,  in 
kind,  were  the  anecdotes  of  Uncle  Sandy.  He  instructed  me, 
to>,  how  to  find,  amid  thickets  of  laminaria  and  fuci,  the  nest 
of  the  lump-fish,  and  taught  me  to  look  well  in  its  immediate 
neighborhood  for  the  male  and  female  fish,  especially  for  the 
male  ;  and  showed  me  further,  that  the  hard-shelled  spawn  of 
this  creature  may,  when  well  washed,  be  eaten  raw,  and  forms 
at  least  as  palatable  a  viand  in  that  state  as  the  imported  ca- 
viare of  Russia  and  the  Caspian.  There  were  instances  in 
which  the  common  crow  acted  as  a  sort  of  jackall  to  us  in  our 
lump-fish  explorations.  We  would  see  him  busied  at  the  side 
of  some  fuci-covered  pool,  screaming  and  cawing  as  if  engaged 
in  combating  an  enemy  ;  and,  on  going  up  to  the  place,  we 
used  to  find  the  lump-fish  he  had  killed  fresh  and  entire,  but 
divested  of  the  eyes,  which  we  found,  as  a  matter  of  course, 
the  assailant,  in  order  to  make  sure  of  victory,  had  taken  the 
precaution  of  picking  out  at  an  early  stage  of  the  contest. 

Nor  was  it  with  merely  the  edible  that  we  busied  ourselves 
on  these  journeys.  The  brilliant  metallic  plumage  of  the  sea- 
mouse  (Aphrodita),  steeped  as  in  the  dyes  of  the  rainbow,  ex- 
cited our  admiration  time  after  time;  and  still  higher  wonder 
used  to  be  awakened  by  a  much  rarer  annelid,  brown,  and 
slender  as  a  piece  of  rope-yarn,  and  from  thirty  to  forty  feet 
in  length,  which  no  one  save  my  uncle  had  ever  found  along 
the  Cromarty  shores,  and  which,  when  broken  in  two,  as  some- 
times happened  in  the  measuring,  divided  its  vitality  so  equally 
between  the  pieces,  that  each  was  fitted,  we  could  not  doubt, 
though  unable  to  repeat  in  the  case  the  experiment  of  Spal- 
lanzani  to  set  up  as  an  independent  existence,  and  carry  on 
business  for  itself.  The  annelids,  too,  that  form  for  them 
selves  tubular  dwellings  built  up  of  large  grains  of  sand  (am 
phitrites),  always  excited  our  interest.  Two  hand-shaped  tufts 
of  golden-hued  setos, — furnished,  however,  with  greatly  more 
than  the  typical  number  of  fingers, — rise  from  the  shoulders 


62  my  schools 

of  these  creatures,  and  must,  I  suspect,  be  used  as  hands  in  the 
process  of  building ;  at  least  the  hands  of  the  most  practised 
builder  could  not  set  stones  with  nicer  skill  than  is  exhibited 
by  these  worms  in  the  setting  of  the  grains  which  compose 
their  cylindrical  dwellings,— dwellings  that,  from  their  form  and 
structure,  seem  suited  to  remind  the  antiquary  of  the  round 
towers  of  Ireland,  and,  from  the  style  of  their  masonry,  of  old 
Cyclopean  walls.  Even  the  mason-wasps  and  bees  are  greatly 
inferior  workmen  to  these  mason  amphitrites.  I  was  introduced 
also,  in  our  ebb  excursions,  to  the  cuttle-fish  and  the  sea-hare, 
and  shown  how  the  one,  when  pursued  by  an  enemy,  dis- 
charges a  cloud  of  ink  to  conceal  its  retreat,  and  that  the  other 
darkens  the  water  around  it  with  a  lovely  purple  pigment, 
which  my  uncle  was  pretty  sure  would  make  a  rich  dye,  like 
that  extracted  of  old  by  the  Tyrians  from  a  whelk  which  he 
had  often  seen  on  the  beach  near  Alexandria.  I  learned,  too, 
to  cultivate  an  acquaintance  with  some  two  or  three  species  of 
doris,  that  carry  their  arboraceous,  tree-like  lungs  on  their 
backs,  as  Macduff's  soldiers  carried  the  boughs  of  Birnam 
wood  to  the  Hill  of  Dunsinane  ;  and  I  soon  acquired  a  sort  of 
affection  for  certain  shells,  which  bore,  as  I  supposed,  a  more 
exotic  aspect  than  their  neighbors.  Among  these  were,  Tro- 
chus  Zizyphinus,  with  its  flame-like  markings  of  crimson,  on 
a  ground  of  paley -brown  ;  Patella  pellucida,  with  its  lustrous 
rays  of  vivid  blue  on  its  dark  epidermis,  that  resemble  the 
sparks  of  a  firework  breaking  against  a  cloud ;  and  above  all, 
Cyprcea  Uuropea,  a  not  rare  shell  farther  to  the  north,  but  so 
little  abundant  in  the  Frith  of  Cromarty,  as  to  render  the  live 
animal,  when  once  or  twice  in  a  season  I  used  to  find  it  creep- 
ing on  the  laminaria  at  the  extreme  outer  edge  of  the  tide- 
line,  with  its  wide  orange  mantle  flowing  liberally  around  it 
somewhat  of  a  prize.  In  short,  the  tract  of  sea-bottom  laid 
dry  by  the  ebb  formed  an  admirable  school,  and  Uncle  Sandy 
an  excellent  teacher,  under  whom  I  was  not  in  the  least  dis- 
posed to  trifle ;  and  when,  long  after  I  learned  to  detect  old- 
marine  bottoms  far  out  of  sight  of  the  sea, — now  amid  the  an- 


63 

cient  forest-covered  Silurians  of  central  England,  and  anon 
opening  to  the  light  on  some  hill-side  among  the  Mountain 
Limestones  of  oui  own  country, — I  have  felt  how  very  much 
I  owed  to  his  instructions. 

His  facts  wanted  a  vocabulary  adequately  fitted  to  represent 
them  ;  but  though  they  "  lacked  a  commodity  of  good  names," 
they  were  all  founded  on  careful  observation,  and  possessed 
that  first  element  of  respectability, — perfect  originality.  They 
were  all  acquired  by  himself.  I  owed  more,  however,  to  the 
habit  of  observation  which  he  assisted  me  in  forming,  than 
even  to  his  facts  themselves ;  and  yet  some  of  these  were  of 
high  value.  He  has  shown  me,  for  instance,  that  an  immense 
granitic  boulder  in  the  neighborhood  of  the  town,  known 
for  ages  as  the  Clach  Malloch,  or  Cursed  Stone,  stands  so 
exactly  in  the  line  of  low  water,  that  the  larger  stream-tides 
of  March  and  September  lay  dry  its  inner  side,  but  never  its 
outer  one  ; — round  the  outer  side  there  are  always  from  twro  to 
four  inches  of  water ;  and  such  had  been  the  case  for  at  least  a 
hundred  years  before,  in  his  father's  and  grandfather's  days, 
— evidence  enough  of  itself,  I  have  heard  him  say,  that  the  rel- 
ative levels  of  sea  and  land  were  not  altering ;  though  during 
the  lapsed  century  the  waves  had  so  largely  encroached  on  the 
low  flat  shores,  that  elderly  men  of  his  acquaintance,  long 
since  passed  away,  had  actually  held  the  plough  when  young 
where  they  had  held  the  rudder  when  old.  He  used,  too,  to 
point  out  to  me  the  effect  of  certain  winds  upon  the  tides.  A 
strong  hasty  gale  from  the  east,  if  coincident  wTith  a  spring- 
tide, sent  up  the  waves  high  upon  the  beach,  and  cut  away 
whole  roods  of  the  soil ;  but  the  gales  that  usually  kept  the 
larger  tides  from  falling  during  ebb  were  prolonged  gales  from 
the  west.  A  series  of  these,  even  when  not  very  high,  left  not 
nnfrequently  from  one  to  two  feet  water  round  the  Clach  Mal- 
loch, during  stream-tides,  that  would  otherwise  have  laid  its 
bott  mi  bare ;  a  proof,  he  used  to  say,  that  the  German  Ocean, 
from  its  want  of  breadth,  could  not  te  heaped  up  against  our 
coasts  *o  the  same  extent,  by  the  vio'  ence  of  a  very  powerful 


64  MY  SCHOOLS  AND   SCHOOLMASTEKS ; 

east  wind,  as  the  Atlantic  by  the  force  of  a  comparatively  mod 
erate  westerly  one.  It  is  not  improbable  that  the  philosophy 
of  the  Drift  Curren*,  and  of  the  apparently  reactionary  Gulf 
Stream,  may  be  embodied  in  this  simple  remark. 

The  woods  on  the  lower  slopes  of  the  hill,  when  there  was 
no  access  to  the  zones  uncovered  by  the  ebb,  furnished  me 
with  employment  of  another  kind.  I  learned  to  look  with  in- 
terest on  the  workings  of  certain  insects,  and  to  understand 
some  of  at  least  their  simpler  instincts.  The  large  Diadem 
Spider,  which  spins  so  strong  a  web,  that,  in  pressing  my  way 
through  the  furze  thickets,  I  could  hear  its  white  silken  cords 
crack  as  they  yielded  before  me,  and  which  I  found  skilled,  like 
an  ancient  magician,  in  the  strange  art  of  rendering  itself  in- 
visible in  the  clearest  light,  was  an  especial  favorite ;  though 
its  great  size,  and  the  wild  stories  I  had  read  about  the  bite  of 
its  cogener  the  tarantula,  made  me  cultivate  its  acquaintance 
somewhat  at  a  distance.  Often,  however,  have  I  stood  beside 
its  large  web,  when  the  creature  occupied  its  place  in  the 
centre,  and,  touching  it  with  a  withered  grass  stalk,  I  have 
seen  it  sullenly  swing  on  the  lines  "  with  its  hands,"  and  then 
shake  them  with  a  motion  so  rapid,  that, — like  Carathis,  the 
mother  of  the  Caliph  Vathek,  who,  when  her  hour  of  doom 
came,  "  glanced  off  in  a  rapid  whirl,  which  rendered  her  invis- 
ible,"— the  eye  failed  to  see  either  web  or  insect  for  minutes 
together.  Nothing  appeals  more  powerfully  to  the  youth- 
ful fancy  than  those  coats,  rings,  and  amulets  of  eastern 
lore,  that  conferred  on  their  possessors  the  gift  of  invisibil- 
ity ;  and  I  deemed  it  a  great  matter  to  have  discovered  for 
myself,  in  living  nature,  a  creature  actually  possessed  of  an 
amulet  of  this  kind,  that,  when  danger  threatened,  could  rush 
into  invisibility.  I  learned,  too,  to  take  an  especial  interest  in 
what,  though  they  belong  to  a  different  family,  are  known  as 
the  Water  Sliders  ;  and  have  watched  them  speeding  by  fits 
and  starts,  like  skaters  on  ice,  across  the  surface  of  some 
woodland  spring  or  streamlet, — fearless  walkers  on  the  water, 
that,  with  true  faith  in  the  integrity  of  the  implanted  instinct 


OK,    THE   STOIiY   OF    MY   EDUCATION.  Gh 

never  made  a  shipwreck  in  the  eddy  or  sank  in  the  pool.  It  is 
to  these  little  creatures  that  Wordsworth  refers  in  one  of  his 
sonnets  on  sleep  : — 

"O  sleep,  thou  art  to  me 
A  fly  that  up  and  down  himself  doth  shove 
Upon  a  fretful  rivulet;  now  above, 
Now  on  the  water,  vexed  with  mockery." 

As  shown,  however,  to  the  poet  himself  on  one  ocvdsion,  some 
what  to  his  discomfort,  by  assuredly  no  mean  authority, — Mr 
James  Wilson, — the  "  vexed"  "  fly,"  though  one  of  the  hemip- 
terous  insects,  never  uses  its  wings,  and  so  never  gets  "  above1 
the  water.  Among  my  other  favorites  were  the  splendid  dra 
gon-flies,  the  crimson-speckled  Burnet  moths,  and  the  small 
azure  butterflies,  that,  when  fluttering  among  delicate  hair- 
bells  and  crimson-tipped  daisies,  used  to  suggest  to  me,  long 
ere  I  became  acquainted  with  the  pretty  figure  of  Moore,*  or 
even  ere  the  figure  had  been  produced,  the  idea  of  flowers  that 
had  taken  to  flying.  The  wild  honey  bees,  too,  in  their  several 
species,  had  peculiar  charms  for  me.  There  were  the  buft- 
colored  carders,  that  erected  over  their  honey-jars  domes  of 
moss ;  the  lapidary  red-tipped  bees,  that  built  amid  the  re- 
cesses of  ancient  cairns,  and  in  old  dry  stone-walls,  and  were 
so  invincibly  brave  in  defending  their  homesteads,  that  they 
never  gave  up  the  quarrel  till  they  died ;  and,  above  all,  the 
yellow-zoned  humble  bees,  that  lodged  deep  in  the  ground 
along  the  dry  sides  of  grassy  banks,  and  were  usually  wealthier 
in  honey  than  any  of  their  cogeners,  and  existed  in  larger  com 
munities.  But  the  herd-boys  of  the  parish,  and  the  foxes  of 
its  woods  and  brakes,  shared  in  my  interest  in  the  wild  honey 
bees,  and,  in  the  pursuit  of  something  else  than  knowledge, 
were  ruthless  robbers  of  their  nests.  I  often  observed,  that  the 
fox,  with  all  his  reputed  shrewdness,  is  not  particularly  know- 


;The  beautiful  blue  damsel  fly, 
That  fluttered  round  ihe  jessamine  stems, 
Like  winged  (lowers  or  flying  gems." 

Paradise  and  riiK  Pi  m. 


66  MY  SCHOOLS  AND  SCHOOLMASTEKS  ; 

ing  on  the  subject  of  bees.  He  makes  as  dead  a  set  on  a 
wasp's  nest  as  on  that  of  the  carder  or  humble  bee,  and  gets, 
I  doubt  not,  heartily  stung  for  his  pains  ;  for  though,  as  shown 
by  the  marks  of  his  teeth,  ]eft  on  fragments  of  the  paper  combs 
scattered  about,  he  attempts  eating  the  young  wasps  in  the 
chrysalis  state,  the  undevoured  remains  seem  to  argue  that  he 
is  but  little  pleased  with  them  as  food.  There  were  occasions, 
however,  in  which  even  the  herd-boys  met  with  only  disap- 
pointment in  their  bee-hunting  excursions ,  and  in  one  notable 
instance,  the  result  of  the  adventure  used  to  be  spoken  of  in 
school  and  elsewhere,  under  our  breath  and  in  secret,  as  some- 
thing very  horrible.  A  party  of  boys  had  stormed  a  humble 
bees'  nest  on  the  side  of  the  old  chapel-brae,  and,  digging  in- 
wards along  the  narrow  winding  earth  passage,  they  at  length 
came  to  a  grinning  human  skull,  and  saw  the  bees  issuing 
thick  from  out  a  round  hole  at  its  base, — the  foramen  magnum. 
The  wise  little  workers  had  actually  formed  their  nest  within 
the  hollow  of  the  head,  once  occupied  by  the  busy  brain  ;  and 
their  spoilers,  more  scrupulous  than  Samson  of  old,  who  seems 
to  have  enjoyed  the  meat  brought  forth  out  of  the  eater,  and 
the  sweetness  extracted  from  the  strong,  left  in  very  great 
consternation  their  honey  all  to  themselves. 

One  of  my  discoveries  of  this  early  period  would  have  been 
deemed  a  not  unimportant  one  by  the  geologist.  Among  the 
woods  of  the  hill,  a  short  half-mile  from  the  town,  there  is  a 
morass  of  comparatively  small  extent,  but  considerable  depth, 
which  had  been  laid  open  by  the  bursting  of  a  waterspout  on 
the  uplands,  and  in  which  the  dark  peaty  chasm  remained  un- 
closed, though  the  event  had  happened  ere  my  birth,  until  I  had 
become  old  and  curious  enough  thoroughly  to  explore  it.  It 
was  a  black  miry  ravine,  some  ten  or  twelve  feet  in  depth.  The 
Dogs  around  waved  thick  with  silvery  willows  of  small  size : 
but,  sticking  out  from  the  black  sides  of  the  ravine  itself,  and 
in  some  instances  stretched  across  it  from  side  to  side,  lay  the 
decayed  remains  of  huge  giants  of  the  vegetable  world,  that  had 
flourished  and  died  long  ages  ere,  in  at  least  our  northern  part 
of  the  island,  the  course  of  history  had  begun.     There  were 


OR,    THE    STORY   OP   MY   EDUCATION.  67 

oaks  of  enormous  girth,  into  whose  coal-black  substance  one 
could  dig  as  easily  with  a  pickaxe  as  one  digs  into  a  bank  of 
clay;  and  at  least  one  noble  elm,  which  ran  across  the  little 
stream  that  trickled,  rather  than  flowed,  along  the  bottom  of 
the  hollow,  and  which  was  in  such  a  state  of  keeping,  that 
I  have  scooped  out  of  its  trunk,  with  the  unassisted  hand,  a 
way  for  the  water.  I  have  found  in  the  ravine  —  which  I 
learned  very  much  to  like  as  a  scene  of  exploration,  though 
I  never  failed  to  quit  it  sadly  bemired  —  handfuls  of  hazel- 
nuts, of  the  ordinary  size,  but  black  as  jet,  with  the  cups  of 
acorns,  and  with  twigs  of  birch  that  still  retained  almost  un- 
changed their  silvery  outer  crust  of  bark,  but  whose  ligneous 
interior  existed  as  a  mere  pulp.  I  have  even  laid  open,  in 
layers  of  a  sort  of  unctuous  clay,  resembling  fuller's  earth, 
leaves  of  oak,  birch,  and  hazel,  that  had  fluttered  in  the  wind 
thousands  of  years  before  ;  and  there  was  one  happy  day  in 
which  I  succeeded  in  digging  from  out  the  very  bottom  of 
the  excavation  a  huge  fragment  of  an  extraordinary-looking' 
deer's  horn.  It  was  a  broad,  massive,  strange-looking  piece  of 
bone,  evidently  old-fashioned  in  its  type  ;  and  so  I  brought  it 
home  in  triumph  to  Uncle  James,  as  the  antiquary  of  the  fam- 
ily, assured  that  he  could  tell  me  all  about  it.  Uncle  James 
paused  in  the  middle  of  his  work  ;  and,  taking  the  horn  in  his 
hand,  surveyed  it  leisurely  on  every  side.  "  That  is  the  horn, 
boy,"  he  at  length  said,  "  of  no  deer  that  now  lives  in  this  coun- 
try. We  have  the  red  deer,  and  the  fallow  deer,  and  the  roe  ; 
and  none  of  them  have  horns  at  all  like  that.  I  never  saw  an 
elk  ;  but  I  am  pretty  sure  this  broad,  plank-like  horn  can  he 
none  other  than  the  horn  of  an  elk."  My  uncle  set  aside  his 
work;  and,  taking  the  horn  in  his  hand,  went  out  to  the  shop 
of  a  cabinetmaker  in  the  neighborhood,  where  there  used  to 
work  from  five  to  six  journeymen.  They  all  gathered  round 
him  to  examine  it,  and  agreed  in  the  decision  that  it  was  an 
entirely  different  sort  of  horn  from  any  borne  by  tin'  existing 
deer  of  Scotland,  and  that  his  surmise  regarding  it  was  prob- 
ably just.  And,  apparently  to  enhance  tin;  marvel,  a  neigh- 
bor, who  was  lounging  in  the  shop  at  the  time,  remarked,  in 


68 

a  tone  of  sober  grav'ty,  that  it  had  lain  in  the  Moss  of  the 
Willows  "  for  perhaps  half  a  century."  There  was  positive 
anger  in  the  tone  of  my  uncle's  reply.  "  Haifa  century,  Sir  !  !" 
he  exclaimed ;  "  was  the  elk  a  native  of  Scotland  half  a  cen- 
tury ago  ?  There  is  no  notice  of  the  elk,  Sir,  in  British  his- 
tory. That  horn  must  have  lain  in  the  Moss  of  the  Willows 
for  thousands  of  years  !  "  Ah  ha,  James,  ah  ha,"  ejaculated 
the  neighbor,  with  a  sceptical  shake  of  the  head ;  but  as 
neither  he  nor  any  one  else  dared  meet  my  uncle  on  historical 
ground,  the  controversy  took  end  with  the  ejaculation.  I 
soon  added  to  the  horn  of  the  elk  that  of  a  roe,  and  part  of 
that  of  a  red  deer,  found  in  the  same  ravine ;  and  the  neigh- 
bors, impressed  by  Uncle  James's  view,  used  to  bring  strangers 
to  look  at  them.  At  length,  unhappily,  a  relation  settled  in 
the  south,  who  had  shown  me  kindness,  took  a  fancy  to  them  ; 
and,  smit  by  the  charms  of  a  gorgeous  paint-box  which  he  had 
just  sent  me,  I  made  them  over  to  him  entire.  They  found 
their  way  to  London,  and  were  ultimately  lodged  in  the  col- 
lection of  some  obscure  virtuoso,  whose  locality  or  name  I 
have  been  unable  to  trace. 

The  Cromarty  Sutors  have  their  two  lines  of  caves, — an  an- 
cient line  hollowed  by  the  waves  many  centuries  ago,  when  the 
sea  stood  in  relation  to  the  land,  from  fifteen  to  thirty  feet 
higher  along  our  shores  than  it  does  now  ;  and  a  modern  line, 
which  the  surf  is  still  engaged  in  scooping  out.  Many  of  the 
older  caves  are  lined  with  stalactites,  deposited  by  springs  that, 
filtering  through  the  cracks  and  fissures  of  the  gneiss,  find  lime 
enough  in  their  passage  to  acquire  what  is  known  as  a  petrify- 
ing, though,  in  reality,  only  an  encrusting  quality.  And  these 
stalactites,  under  the  name  of  "  white  stones  made  by  the 
water,"  formed  of  old — as  in  that  Cave  of  Slains  specially  men 
tioned  by  Buchanan  and  the  Chroniclers,  and  in  those  caverns 
of  the  Peak  so  quaintly  described  by  Cotton — one  of  the  grand 
marvels  of  the  place.  Almost  all  the  old  gazetteers  sufficient- 
ly copious  in  their  details  to  mention  Cromarty  at  all,  refer  to 
its  "  Dropping  ^ave"  as  a  marvellous  marble-producing  cav- 
ern ;  and  this  "  Di  :>pping  Cave"  is  but  one  of  many  that  look 


OR,    THE   STORY   OF   MY   EDUCATION.  69 

out  upon  the  sea  from  the  precipices  of  the  southern  Sutor,  in 
whose  dark  recesses  the  drops  ever  tinkle,  and  the  stony  ceil- 
ings ever  grow.  The  wonder  could  not  have  been  deemed  a 
great  or  very  rare  one  by  a  man  like  the  late  Sir  George  Mac- 
kenzie of  Coul,  well  known  from  his  travels  in  Iceland,  and 
his  experiments  on  the  inflammability  of  the  diamond  ;  but  it 
so  happened,  that  Sir  George,  curious  to  see  what  sort  of  stones 
to  which  the  old  gazetteers  referred,  made  application  to  the 
minister  of  the  parish  for  a  set  of  specimens ;  and  the  minister 
straightway  deputed  the  commission,  which  he  believed  to  be 
not  a  difficult  one,  to  one  of  his  poorer  parishoners,  an  old 
nailer,  as  a  means  of  putting  a  few  shillings  in  his  way. 

It  so  happened,  however,  that  the  nailer  had  lost  his  wife 
by  a  sad  accident,  only  a  few  weeks  before ;  and  the  story 
went  abroad  that  the  poor  woman  was,  as  the  townspeople 
expressed  it,  "coming  back."  She  had  been  very  suddenly 
hurried  out  of  the  world.  When  going  down  the  quay,  after 
nightfall  one  evening,  with  a  parcel  of  clean  linen  for  a  sailor, 
her  relative,  she  had  missed  footing  on  the  pier  edge,  and, 
half-brained,  half-drowned,  had  been  found  in  the  morning, 
stone  dead,  at  the  bottom  of  the  harbor.  And  now,  as  if 
pressed  by  some  unsettled  business,  she  used  to  be  seen,  it  was 
said,  hovering  after  nightfall  about  her  old  dwelling,  or  saun- 
tering along  the  neighboring  street ;  nay,  there  were  occa- 
sions, according  to  the  general  report,  in  which  she  had  even 
exchanged  words  with  some  of  the  neighbors,  little  to  their 
satisfaction.  The  words,  however,  seemed  in  every  instance 
to  have  wonderfully  little  to  do  with  the  affairs  of  another 
world.  I  remember  seeing  the  wife  of  a  neighbor  rush  into 
my  mother's  one  evening  about  this  time,  speechless  with  tci 
ror,  and  declare,  after  an  awful  pause,  during  which  she  had 
lain  half  fainting  in  a  chair,  that  she  had  just  seen  Christy. 
She  had  been  engaged,  as  the  night  was  falling,  but  ere  dark- 
ness had  quite  set  in,  in  piling  up  a  load  of  brushwood  for 
fuel  outside  her  door,  when  up  started  the  spectre  on  the  other 
side  of  the  heap,  attired  in  the  ordinary  work-day  garb  of  the 


70  MY   SCHOOLS   AND   SCHOOLMASTERS; 

deceased,  and,  in  a  light  and  hurried  tone,  asked,  as  Christy 
might  have  done  ere.  the  fatal  accident,  for  a  share  of  the 
brushwood.  "  Give  me  some  of  that  hag"  said  the  ghost ; 
"  you  have  plenty, — I  have  none."  It  was  not  known  whether 
or  no  the  nailer  had  seen  the  apparition  ;  but  it  was  pretty 
certain  he  believed  in  it ;  and  as  the  "  Dropping  Cave"  is  both 
dark  and  solitary,  and  had  forty  years  ago  a  bad  name  to  boot, 
— for  the  mermaid  had  been  observed  disporting  in  front  of  it 
even  at  mid-day,  and  lights  seen  and  screams  heard  from  it 
at  nights, — it  must  have  been  a  rather  formidable  place  to  a 
iiiuii  living  in  the  momentary  expectation  of  a  visit  from  a 
dead  wife.  So  far  as  could  be  ascertained, — for  the  nailer 
himself  was  rather  close  in  the  matter, — he  had  not  entered 
the  cave  at  all.  He  seemed,  judging  from  the  marks  of  scrap- 
ing left  along  the  sides  for  about  two  or  three  feet  from  the 
narrow  opening,  to  have  taken  his  stand  outside,  where  the 
light  was  good,  and  the  way  of  retreat  clear,  and  to  have  raked 
outwards  to  him,  as  far  as  he  could  reach,  all  that  stuck  to 
the  walls,  including  ropy  slime  and  mouldy  damp,  but  not  one 
particle  of  stalactite.  It  was  of  course  seen  that  his  specimens 
would  not  suit  Sir  George  ;  and  the  minister,  in  the  extremity 
of  the  case,  applied  to  my  uncles,  though  with  some  little  un- 
willingness, as  it  was  known  that  no  remuneration  for  their 
trouble  could  be  offered  to  them.  My  uncles  were,  however, 
delighted  with  the  commission, — it  was  all  for  the  benefit  of 
science;  and,  providing  themselves  with  torches  and  a  hammer, 
they  set  out  for  the  caves.  And  I,  of  course,  accompanied 
them, — a  very  happy  boy, — armed,  like  themselves,  with  ham- 
mer and  torch,  and  prepared  devoutedly  to  labor  in  behalf  of 
science  and  Sir  George. 

I  had  never  before  seen  the  caves  by  torch-light ;  and  thougl 
what  I  now  witnessed  did  not  quite  come  up  to  what  I  had 
read  regarding  the  Grotto  of  Antiparos,  or  even  the  wonders 
of  the  Peak,  it  was  unquestionably  both  strange  and  fine.  The 
celebrated  Dropping  Cave  proved  inferior — as  is  not  unfre 
quently  the  case  with  the  celebrated — to   a  cave  almost   en- 


71 

tirely  unknown,  which  opened  among  the  rocks  a  little  further 
to  the  east ;  and  yet  even  it  had  its  interest.  It  widened,  as 
one  entered,  into  a  twilight  chamber, green  with  velvety  mosses, 
that  love  the  damp  and  the  shade ;  and  terminated  in  a  range 
of  crystalline  wells,  fed  by  the  perpetual  dropping,  and  hollowed 
in  what  seemed  an  altar-piece  of  the  deposited  marble.  And 
above,  and  along  the  sides,  there  depended  many  a  draped  fold, 
and  hung  many  a  translucent  icicle.  The  other  cave,  how- 
ever, we  found  to  be  of  much  greater  extent,  and  of  more  va- 
ried character.  It  is  one  of  three  caves  of  the  old  coast  line, 
known  as  the  Doocot  or  Pigeon  Caves,  which  open  upon  a 
piece  of  rocky  beach,  overhung  by  a  rudely  semicircular  range 
of  gloomy  precipices.  The  points  of  the  semicircle  project  on 
either  side  into  deep  water, — into  at  least  water  so  much  deeper 
than  the  fall  of  ordinary  neaps,  that  it  is  only  during  the  ebb 
of  stream  tides  that  the  place  is  accessible  by  land ;  and  in  each 
of  these  bold  promontories, — the  terminal  horns  of  the  cres- 
cent,— there  is  a  cave  of  the  present  coast-line,  deeply  hollow- 
ed, in  which  the  sea  stands  from  ten  to  twelve  feet  in  depth 
when  the  tide  is  at  full,  and  in  which  the  surf  thunders,  when 
gales  blow  hard  from  the  stormy  north-east,  with  the  roar  of 
whole  parks  of  artillery.  The  cave  in  the  western  promon- 
tory, which  bears  among  the  townsfolk  the  name  of  the  "  Puir 
"Wife's  Meal  Kist,'1  has  its  roof  drilled  by  two  small  perfora- 
tions,— the  largest  of  them  not  a  great  deal  wider  than  the 
blow-hole  of  a  porpoise, — that  open  externally  among  the  cliffs 
above  ;  and  when,  during  storms  from  the  sea,  the  huge  waves 
come  rolling  ashore  like  green  moving  walls,  there  are  cer- 
tain times  of  the  tide  in  which  they  shut  up  the  mouth  of  the 
cave,  and  so  compress  the  air  within  that  it  rushes  upwards 
through  the  openings,  roaring  in  its  escape  as  if  ten  whales 
were  blowing  at  once,  and  rises  from  amid  the  crags  overhead 
in  two  white  jets  of  vapor,  distinctly  visible,  to  the  height  of 
from  sixty  to  eighty  feet.  If  there  be  critics  who  have  deemed 
it  one  of  the  extravagancies  of  Goethe  that  he  should  have 
given  life  and  motion,  as  in  his  famous  witch-scene  in  "  Faust," 
to  the  1  lartz  crags,  they  would  do  well  to  visit  this  bold  head- 


72  MY  SCHOOLS  AND  SCHOOLMASTERS; 

land  during  some  winter  tempest  from  the  east,  and  find  his 
description  perfectly  sober  and  true:  — 

"See  the  giant  craers,  oh  ho! 
How  they  snort  and  how  they  blow." 

Within,  at  the  bottom  of  the  crescent,  and  where  the  tide 
never  reaches  when  at  the  fullest,  we  found  the  large  pigeon 
^ave  which  we  had  come  to  explore,  hollowed  for  about  a  hun- 
Ired  and  fifty  feet  in  the  line  of  a  fault.  There  runs  across 
the  opening  the  broken  remains  of  a  wall  erected  by  some 
monopolizing  proprietor  of  the  neighboring  lands,  with  the 
intention  of  appropriating  to  himself  the  pigeons  of  the  cav- 
ern ;  but  his  day,  even  at  this  time,  had  been  long  gone  by, 
and  the  wall  had  sunk  into  a  ruin.  As  we  advanced,  the  cave 
caught  the  echoes  of  our  footsteps,  and  a  flock  of  pigeons, 
startled  from  their  nests,  came  whizzing  out,  almost  brushing 
us  with  their  wings.  The  damp  floor  sounded  hollow  to  our 
tread  ;  we  saw  the  green  mossy  sides,  which  close  in  the  un- 
certain light,  more  than  twenty  feet  overhead,  furrowed  by 
ridges  of  stalactites,  that  became  whiter  and  purer  as  they  re- 
tired from  the  vegetable  influences  ;  and  marked  that  the  last 
plant  which  appeared  as  we  wended  our  way  inward  was  a 
minute  green  moss,  about  half  an  inch  in  length,  which  slant- 
ed outwards  on  the  prominences  of  the  sides,  and  overlay  myr- 
iads of  similar  sprigs  of  moss,  long  before  converted  into  stone, 
but  which,  faithful  in  death  to  the  ruling  law  of  their  lives, 
still  pointed,  like  the  others,  to  the  free  air  and  the  light. 
And  then,  in  the  deeper  recesses  of  the  cave,  where  the  floor 
becomes  covered  with  uneven  sheets  of  stalagmite,  and  where 
long  spear-like  icicles  and  drapery-like  foldings,  pure  as  the 
marble  of  the  sculptor,  descend  from  above,  or  hung  pendent 
over  the  sides,  we  found  in  abundance  magnificent  specimens 
for  Sir  George.  The  entire  expedition  was  one  of  wondrous 
interest ;  and  I  returned  next  day  to  school,  big  with  descrip- 
tion and  narrative,  to  excite,  by  truths  more  marvellous  than 
fiction,  the  curiosity  of  my  class-fellows. 

I  had  previously  introduced  them  to  the  marvels  of  the  hill ; 


73 

and  during  our  Saturday  half-holidays,  some  of  them  had  ac- 
companied me  in  my  excursions  to  it.  But  it  had  failed,  some- 
how, to  catch  their  fancy.  It  was  too  solitary,  and  too  far 
from  home,  and  as  a  scene  of  amusement,  not  at  all  equal 
to  the  town-links,  where  they  could  play  at  "  shinty,"  and 
"  French  and  English,"  almost  within  hail  of  their  parents' 
homesteads.  The  very  tract  along  its  flat,  mossy  summit,  over 
A^hich,  according  to  tradition,  Wallace  had  once  driven  before 
im  in  headlong  rout  a  strong  body  of  English,  and  whic 
was  actually  mottled  with  sepulchral  tumuli,  still  visible  amid 
the  heath,  failed  in  any  marked  degree  to  engage  them  ;  and 
though  they  liked  well  enough  to  hear  about  the  caves,  they 
seemed  to  have  no  very  great  desire  to  see  them.  There 
was,  however,  one  little  fellow,  who  sat  at  the  Latin  form, — 
the  member  of  a  class  lower  and  brighter  than  the  heavy  one, 
though  it  was  not  particularly  bright  neither, — who  differed  in 
this  respect  from  all  the  others.  Though  he  was  my  junior  by 
about  a  twelvemonth,  and  shorter  by  about  half  a  head,  he 
was  a  diligent  boy  in  even  the  Grammar  School,  in  which  boys 
were  so  rarely  diligent,  and,  for  his  years,  a  thoroughly  sen- 
sible one,  without  a  grain  of  the  dreamer  in  his  composition. 
I  succeeded,  however,  notwithstanding  his  sobriety,  in  infect- 
ing him  thoroughly  with  my  peculiar  tastes,  and  learned  to 
love  him  very  much,  partly  because  he  doubled  my  amuse- 
ments by  sharing  in  them,  and  partly,  I  dare  say, — on  the  prin- 
ciple on  which  Mahomet  preferred  his  old  wife  to  his  young 
one, — because  "  he  believed  in  me."  Devoted  to  him  as  Ca- 
liban in  the  Tempest  to  his  friend  Trinculo, — 

"I  showed  him  the  best  springs,  I  plucked  him  berries, 
And  I  with  my  long  nails  did  dig  him  pig-nuts." 

His  curiosity  on  this  occasion  was  largely  excited  by  my  de 
scription  of  the  Doocot  Cave  ;  and,  setting  out  one  morning 
to  explore  its  wonders,  armed  with  John  Feddes's  hammer,  in 
the  benefits  of  which  my  friend  was  permitted  liberally  to 
share,  we  failed,  for  that  day  at  least,  in  finding  our  way  back. 
It  was  on  a  pleasant  spring  morning  that,  with  my  little 


74  MY  SCHOOLS   AND   SCHOOLMASTERS; 

curious  friend  beside  me,  I  stood  on  the  beach  opposite  the 
eastern  promontory,  that,  with  its  stern  granitic  wall,  bars  ac- 
cess for  ten  days  out  of  every  fourteen  to  the  wonders  of  fl?3 
Doocot ;  and  saw  it  stretching  provokingly  out  into  the  green 
water.  It  was  hard  to  be  disappointed  and  the  cave  so  near. 
The  tide  was  low  neap,  and  if  we  wanted  a  passage  dry-shod, 
it  behoved  us  to  wait  for  at  least  a  week  ;  but  neither  of  us 
understood  the  philosophy  of  neap-tides  at  the  period.  I  was- 
quite  sure  I  had  got  round  at  low  water  with  my  uncles  not  e 
great  many  days  before,  and  we  both  inferred,  that  if  we  but 
succeeded  in  getting  round  now,  it  would  be  quite  a  pleasure 
to  wait  among  the  caves  inside  until  such  time  as  the  fall  of 
the  tide  should  lay  bare  a  passage  for  our  return.  A  narrow 
and  broken  shelf  runs  along  the  promontory,  on  which,  by  the 
assistance  of  the  naked  toe  and  the  toe-nail,  it  is  just  possible 
to  creep.  We  succeeded  in  scrambling  up  to  it ;  and  then, 
crawling  outwards  on  all  fours, — the  precipice,  as  we  proceed- 
ed, beetling  more  and  more  formidable  from  above,  and  the 
water  becoming  greener  and  deeper  below, — we  reached  the 
outer  point  of  the  promontory ;  and  then  doubling  the  cape 
on  a  still  narrowing  margin, — the  water,  by  a  rej-'erse  process, 
becoming  shallower  and  less  green  as  we  advanced  inwards, — 
we  found  the  ledge  terminating  just  where,  after  clearing  the 
sea,  it  overhung  the  gravelly  beach  at  an  elevation  of  nearly 
ten  feet.  Adown  we  both  dropped,  proud  of  our  success ;  up 
splashed  the  rattling  gravel  as  we  fell ;  and  for  at  least  the 
whole  coming  week — though  we  were  unaware  of  the  extent 
of  our  good  luck  at  the  time — the  marvels  of  the  Doocot  Cave 
might  be  regarded  as  solely  and  exclusively  our  own.  For  one 
short  seven  days, — to  borrow  emphasis  from  the  phraseology  of 
Carlyle, — "  they  were  our  own,  and  no  other  man's." 

The  first  few  hours  were  hours  of  sheer  enjoyment.  The 
larger  cave  proved  a  mine  of  marvels  and  we  found  a  great 
deal  additional  to  wonder  at  on  the  slopes  beneath  the  preci- 
pices, and  along  the  piece  of  rocky  sea-beach  in  front.  We 
succeeded  in  discovering  for  ourselves,  in  creeping,  dwarf 
bushes,  that  told  of  the  blighting  influence  of  the  sea-spray  ; 


OR,    THE   STORY   OF  MY    EDUCATION.  75 

the  pale-yellow  honeysuckle,  that  we  had  never  seen  before, 
save  in  gardens  and  shrubberies  ;  and  on  a  deeply  shaded  slope 
that  leaned  against  one  of  the  steeper  precipices,  we  detected 
the  sweet-scented  woodruff1  of  the  flower -plot  and  parterre, 
with  its  pretty  verticillate  leaves,  that  become  the  more  odor- 
iferous the  more  they  are  crushed,  and  its  white  delicate  flow- 
ers. There,  too,  immediately  in  the  opening  of  the  deeper 
cave,  where  a  small  stream  came  pattering  in  detached  drops 
from  the  over-beeiling  precipice  above,  like  the  first  drops  of 
a  heavy  thunder-shower,  we  found  the  hot,  bitter  scurvy  grass, 
with  its  minute  cruciform  flowers,  which  the  great  Captain 
Cook  had  used  in  his  voyages  ;  above  all,  there  were  the  caves 
with  their  pigeons, — white,  variegated,  and  blue, — and  their 
mysterious  and  gloomy  depths,  in  which  plants  hardened  into 
stone,  and  water  became  marble.  In  a  short  time  we  had  brok- 
en off  with  our  hammer  whole  pocketfuls  of  stalactites  and 
petrified  moss.  There  were  little  pools  at  the  side  of  the  cave, 
where  we  could  see  the  work  of  congelation  going  on,  as  at  the 
commencement  of  an  October  frost,  when  the  cold  north  wind 
ruffles,  and  but  barely  ruffles,  the  surface  of  some  mountain 
lochan  or  sluggish  moorland  stream,  and  shows  the  newly- 
formed  needles  of  ice  projecting  mole-like  from  the  shores  into 
the  water.  So  rapid  was  the  course  of  deposition,  that  .there 
were  cases  in  which  the  sides  of  the  hollows  seemed  growing 
almost  in  proportion  as  the  water  rose  in  them ;  the  springs, 
lipping  over,  deposited  their  minute  crystals  on  the  edges ;  and 
the  reservoirs  deepened  and  became  more  capacious  as  their 
mounds  were  built  up  by  this  curious  masonry.  The  long 
telescopic  prospect  of  the  sparkling  sea,  as  viewed  from  the 
inner  extremity  of  the  cavern,  while  all  around  was  dark  as 
midnight, — the  sudden  gleam  of  the  sea-gull,  seen  for  a  mo- 
ment from  the  recess,  as  it  flitted  past  in  the  sunshine, — the 
black  heaving  bulk  of  the  grampus,  as  it  threw  up  its  slender 
jets  of  spray,  and  then,  turning  downwards,  displayed  its  glossy 
back  and  vast  angular  fin, — even  the  pigeons,  as  they  shot 
whizzing  by,  one  moment  scarce  visible  in  the  gloom,  the  next 
radia»it  in  the  light, — all  acquired  a  new  interest,  from  the  pe- 


76  MY  SCHOOLS  AND    SCHOOLMASTERS; 

culiarity  ;f  the  setting  in  which  we  saw  them.  They  formed 
a  series  of  sun-gilt  vignettes,  framed  in  jet ;  and  it  was  long 
ere  we  tired  of  seeing  and  admiring  in  them  much  of  the 
strange  and  the  beautiful.  It  did  seem  rather  ominous,  how- 
ever, and  perhaps  somewhat  supernatural  to  boot,  that  abou 
an  hour  after  noon,  the  tide,  while  there  was  yet  a  full  fathom 
of  water  beneath  the  brow  of  the  promontory,  ceased  to  fall, 
and  then,  after  a  quarter  of  an  hour's  space,  began  actually  to 
creep  upwards  on  the  beach.  But  just  hoping  that  there  might 
be  some  mistake  in  the  matter,  which  "he  evening  tide  would 
scarce  fail  to  rectify,  we  continued  to  amuse  ourselves,  and  to 
hope  on.  Hour  after  hour  passed,  lengthening  as  the  shadows 
lengthened,  and  yet  the  tide  still  rose.  The  sun  had  sunk  be- 
hind the  precipices,  and  all  was  gloom  along  their  bases,  and 
double  gloom  in  their  caves ;  but  their  rugged  brows  still 
caught  the  red  glare  of  evening.  The  flush  rose  higher  and 
higher,  chased  by  the  shadows ;  and  then,  after  lingering  for 
a  moment  on  their  crests  of  honeysuckle  and  juniper,  passed 
away,  and  the  whole  became  sombre  and  gray.  The  sea-gull 
sprang  upwards  from  where  he  had  floated  on  the  ripple,  and 
hied  him  slowly  away  to  his  lodge  in  his  deep-sea  stack ;  the 
dusky  cormorant  flitted  past,  with  heavier  and  more  frequent 
stroke,  to  his  whitened  shelf  high  on  the  precipice ;  the  pig- 
eons came  whizzing  downwards  from  the  uplands  and  the 
opposite  land,  and  disappeared  amid  the  gloom  of  their  caves  ; 
every  creature  that  had  wings  made  use  of  them  in  speeding 
homewards ;  but  neither  my  companion  nor  myself  had  any  ; 
and  there  was  no  possibility  of  getting  home  without  them. 
We  made  desperate  efforts  to  scale  the  precipices,  and  on  two 
several  occasions  succeeded  in  reaching  mid-way  shelves  among 
the  crags,  where  the  sparrowhawk  and  the  raven  build  ;  but 
though  we  had  climbed  well  enough  to  render  our  return  a 
matter  of  bare  possibility ,  there  was  no  possibility  whatever  of 
getting  farther  up ;  the  cliffs  had  never  been  scaled  before, 
and  they  were  not  destined  to  be  scaled  now.  And  so,  as 
the  twilight  deepened,  and  the  precarious  footing  became  every 
moment  more  doubtful  and  precarious  still,  we  had  just  to 


77 

give  up  in  despair.  "Wouldn't  care  for  myself,"  said  the 
poor  little  fellow,  my  companion,  bursting  into  tears,  "  if  it 
were  not  for  my  mother ;  but  what  will  my  mother  say  V 
"  Wouldn't  care  neither,"  said  I,  with  a  heavy  heart ;  "  but 
it's  just  back  water,  and  we'll  get  out  at  twall."  We  retreated 
together  into  one  of  the  shallower  and  drier  caves,  and,  clear- 
ing a  little  spot  of  its  rough  stones,  and  then  groping  along  the 
rocks  for  the  dry  grass  that  in  the  spring  season  hangs  from 
them  in  withered  tufts,  we  formed  for  ourselves  a  most  uncom 
fortable  bed,  and  lay  down  in  one  another's  arms.  For  the 
last  few  hours  mountainous  piles  of  clouds  had  been  rising 
dark  and  stormy  in  the  sea-mouth  :  they  had  flared  porten- 
tously in  the  setting  sun,  and  had  worn,  with  the  decline  of 
evening,  almost  every  meteoric  tint  of  anger,  from  fiery  red  to 
a  sombre  thundrous  brown,  and  from  sombre  brown  to  doleful 
black.  And  we  could  now  at  least  hear  what  they  portended, 
though  we  could  no  longer  see.  The  rising  wind  began  to 
howl  mournfully  amid  the  cliffs,  and  the  sea,  hitherto  so  si- 
lent, to  beat  heavily  against  the  shore,  and  to  boom,  like  dis- 
tress-guns, from  the  recesses  of  the  two  deep-sea  caves.  We 
could  hear,  too,  the  beating  rain,  now  heavier,  now  lighter,  as 
the  gusts  swelled  or  sank ;  and  the  intermittent  patter  of  the 
streamlet  over  the  deeper  cave,  now  driving  against  the  preci 
pices,  now  descending  heavily  on  the  stones. 

My  companion  had  only  the  real  evils  of  the  case  to  deal 
with,  and  so,  the  hardness  of  our  bed  and  the  coldness  of  the 
night  considered,  he  slept  tolerably  well ;  but  I  was  unlucky 
enough  to  have  evils  greatly  worse  than  the  real  ones  to  annoy 
me.  The  corpse  of  a  drowned  seaman  had  been  found  on  the 
beach  about  a  month  previous,  some  forty  yaids  from  where 
we  lay.  The  hands  and  feet,  miserably  contracted,  and  corru- 
gated into  deep  folds  at  every  joint,  yet  swollen  to  twice  their 
proper  size,  had  been  bleached  as  white  as  pieces  of  alumed 
sheep-skin ;  and  where  the  head  should  have  been,  there  ex- 
isted or  ly  a  sad  mass  of  rubbish.  I  had  examined  the  body, 
as  young  people  are  apt  to  do,  a  great  deal  too  curiously  for 
my  peace;  and,  though  I  had  never  done  the  poor  nameless 


78  MY  SCHOOLS   AND  SCHOOLMASTERS  ; 

seaman  any  harm,  I  could  not  have  suffered  more  from  him 
during  that  melancholy  night,  had  I  been  his  murderer. 
Sleeping  or  waking,  he  was  continually  before  me.  Every 
time  I  dropped  into  a  doze,  he  would  come  stalking  up  the 
beach  from  the  spot  where  he  had  lain,  with  his  stiff  white  fin- 
gers, that  stuck  out  like  eagles'  toes,  and  his  pale,  broken  pulp 
of  a  head,  and  attempt  striking  me  ;  and  then  I  would  awaken 
with  a  start,  cling  to  my  companion,  and  remember  that  the 
drowned  sailor  had  lain  festering  among  the  identical  bunches 
of  sea-weed  that  still  rotted  on  the  beach  not  a  stone-cast 
away.  The  near  neighborhood  of  a  score  of  living  bandits 
would  have  inspired  less  horror  than  the  recollection  of  that 
one  dead  seaman. 

Towards  midnight  the  sky  cleared  and  .the  wind  fell,  and 
the  moon,  in  her  last  quarter,  rose  red  as  a  mass  of  heated  iron 
out  of  the  sea.  We  crept  down,  in  the  uncertain  light,  over  the 
rough  slippery  crags,  to  ascertain  whether  the  tide  had  not 
fallen  sufficiently  far  to  yield  us  a  passage ;  but  we  found  the 
waves  chafing  among  the  rocks  just  where  the  tide-line  had 
rested  twelve  hours  before,  and  a  full  fathom  of  sea  enclasping 
the  base  of  the  promontory.  A  glimmering  idea  of  the  real 
nature  of  our  situation  at  length  crossed  my  mind.  It  was  not 
imprisonment  for  a  tide  to  which  we  had  consigned  ourselves ; 
it  was  imprisonment  for  a  week.  There  was  little  comfort 
in  the  thought,  arising,  as  it  did,  amid  the  chills  and  terrors  of 
a  dreary  midnight ;  and  I  looked  wistfully  on  the  sea  as  our 
only  path  of  escape.  There  was  a  vessel  crossing  the  wake  of 
the  moon  at  the  time,  scarce  half  a  mile  from  the  shore ;  and, 
assisted  by  my  companion,  I  began  to  shout  at  the  top  of  my 
lungs,  in  the  hope  of  being  heard  by  the  sailors.  We  saw  her 
dim  bulk  falling  slowly  athwart  the  red  glittering  belt  of  light 
that  had  rendered  her  visible,  and  then  disappearing  in  the 
murky  blackness ;  and  just  as  we  lost  sight  of  her  forever,  we 
could  hear  an  indistinct  sound  mingling  with  the  dash  of  the 
waves, — the  shout,  in  reply,  of  the  startled  helmsman.  The 
vessel,  as  we  afterwards  learned,  was  a  large  stone-lighter, 
deeply  laden,  and  unfurnished  with  a  boat ;  nor  were  her  crew 


79 

at  all  sure  that  it  would  have  been  safe  to  attend  to  the  mid- 
night voice  from  amid  the  rocks,  even  had  they  the  means  of 
communication  with  the  shore.  We  waited  on  and  on,  how- 
ever, now  shouting  by  turns,  and  now  shouting  together  ;  but 
there  was  no  second  reply  ;  and  at  length,  losing  hope,  we 
groped  our  way  back  to  our  comfortless  bed,  just  as  the  tide 
had  again  turned  on  the  beach,  and  the  waves  began  to  roll 
up\A  ards  higher  and  higher  at  every  dash. 
*  As  the  moon  rose  and  brightened,  the  dead  seaman  became 
less  troublesome ;  and  I  had  succeeded  in  dropping  as  soundly 
asleep  as  my  companion,  when  we  were  both  aroused  by  a  loud 
shout.  We  started  up,  and  again  crept  downwards  among 
the  crags  to  the  shore ;  and  as  we  reached  the  sea,  the  shout 
was  repeated.  It  was  that  of  at  least  a  dozen  harsh  voices 
united.  There  was  a  brief  pause,  followed  by  another  shout ; 
and  then  two  boats,  strongly  manned,  shot  round  the  western 
promontory,  and  the  men,  resting  on  their  oars,  turned  towards 
the  rock,  and  shouted  yet  again.  The  whole  town  had  been 
alarmed  by  the  intelligence  that  two  little  boys  had  straggled 
away  in  the  morning  to  the  rocks  of  the  southern  Sutor,  and 
had  not  found  their  way  back.  The  precipices  had  been  a 
scene  of  frightful  accidents  from  time  immemorial,  and  it  was 
at  once  inferred  that  one  other  sad  accident  had  been  added  to 
the  number.  True,  there  were  cases  remembered  of  people 
having  been  tide-bound  in  the  Doocot  Caves,  and  not  much 
the  worse  in  consequence  ;  but  as  the  caves  were  inaccessible 
during  neaps,  we  could  not,  it  was  said,  possibly  be  in  them; 
and  the  sole  remaining  ground  of  hope  was,  that,  as  had  hap- 
pened once  before,  only  one  of  the  two  had  been  killed,  and 
that  the  survivor  was  lingering  among  the  rocks,  afraid  to  come 
home.  And  in  this  belief,  when  the  moon  rose  and  the  surf 
fell,  the  two  boats  had  been  fitted  out.  It  was  late  in  the  morn- 
ing ere  we  reached  Cromarty,  but  a  crowd  on  the  beach  await 
ed  our  arrival ;  and  there  were  anxious-looking  lights  glancing 
in  the  windows,  thick  and  manifold ;  nay,  such  was  the  inter-x 
est  elicited,  that  some  enormously  bad  verse,  in  which  the 
writer  described  the  incident  a  few  days  after,  became  popular 


80  MY  SCHOOLS  AND  SCHOOLMASTERS; 

enough  to  be  handed  about  in  manuscript,  and  read  at  tea- 
parties  by  the  elite  of  the  town.  Poor  old  Miss  Bond,  who 
kept  the  town  boarding-school,  got  the  piece  nicely  dressed  up, 
somewhat  upon  the  principle  on  which  Macpherson  translated 
Ossian  ;  and  at  her  first  school-examination — proud  and  happy 
day  for  the  author  ! — it  was  recited  with  vast  applause,  by  one 
of  her  prettiest  young  ladies,  before  the  assembled  taste  and 
fashi-  a  of  Cromartv 


OB,  THE   STOEY  OF   MY  EDUCATION.  81 


CHAPTER  7. 

"The  wise 
Sl.ook  their  white  aged  heads  o'er  me,  and  &a.d, 
Of  such  materials  wretched  men  were  made." 

Byron. 

The  report  went  abroad  about  this  time,  not  without  some 
foundation,  that  Miss  Bond  purposed  patronizing  me.  The 
copy  of  my  verses  which  had  fallen  into  her  hands — a  genuine 
holograph — bore  atop  a  magnificent  view  of  the  Doocot,  in 
which  horrid  crags  of  burnt  umber  were  perforated  by  yawn- 
ing caverns  of  Indian-ink,  and  crested  by  a  dense  pine  forest 
of  sap-green  ;  while  vast  waves,  blue  on  the  one  side  and  green 
on  the  other,  and  bearing  blotches  of  white  lead  atop,  rolled 
frightfully  beneath.  And  Miss  Bond  had  concluded,  it  was 
said,  that  such  a  genius  as  that  evinced  by  the  sketch  and  the 
"poem"  for  those  sister  arts  of  painting  and  poesy  in  which 
she  herself  excelled,  should  not  be  left  to  waste  itself  uneared 
for  in  the  desert  wilderness.  She  had  published,  shortly  lie- 
fore,  a  work,  in  two  slim  volumes,  entitled,  "  Letters  of  a  Vil- 
lage Governess," — a  curious  kind  of  medley,  little  amenable  to 
the  ordinary  rules, but  a  genial  book,  notwithstanding,  with 
nore  heart  than  head  about  it ;  and  not  a  few  of  the  incidents 
which  it  related  had  the  merit  of  being  true.  It  was  an  un- 
lucky merit  for  poor  Miss  Bond.  She  dated  her  book  from 
Fortrose,  where  she  taught  what  was  designated  in  the  Al- 
manac as  the  boarding-schot  1  of  the  place,  but  which,  accord- 


S2  MY  SCHOOLS   AND   SCHOOLMASTERS; 

ing  to  Miss  Bond's  own  description,  was  the  school  of  the 
"  village  governess."  And  as  her  tales  were  found  to  be  a 
kind  of  mosaics  composed  of  droll  bits  of  fact  picked  up  in  the 
neighborhood,  Fortrose  soon  became  considerably  too  hot  for 
her.  She  had  drawn,  under  the  over-transparent  guise  of  the 
niggardly  Mrs.  Flint,  the  skin-flint  wife  of  a  "  paper  minister," 
who  had  ruined  at  one  fell  blow  her  best  silk  dress,  and  a 
dozen  of  good  eggs  to  boot,  by  putting  the  eggs  in  her  pocket 
when  going  out  to  a  party,  and  then  stumbling  over  a  stone. 
And,  of  course,  Mrs.  Skinflint  and  the  Rev.  Mr.  Skinflint,  with 
all  their  blood-relations,  could  not  be  other  than  greatly  grati- 
fied to  find  the  story  furbished  up  in  the  printed  form,  and 
set  in  fun.  There  were  other  stories  as  imprudent  and  as 
amusing, — of  young  ladies  caught  eavesdropping  at  their 
neighbors'  windows ;  and  of  gentlemen,  ill  at  ease  in  their 
families,  sitting  soaking  among  vulgar  companions  in  the  public 
house  ;  and  so  the  authoress,  shortly  after  the  appearance  of 
her  work,  ceased  to  be  the  village  governess  of  Fortrose,  anc7 
became  the  village  governess  of  Cromarty. 

It  was  on  this  occasion  that  I  saw,  for  the  first  time,  with 
mingled  admiration  and  awe,  a  human  creature, — not  dead 
and  gone,  and  merely  a  printed  name, — that  had  actually 
published  a  book.  Poor  Miss  Bond  was  a  kindly  sort  of 
person,  fond  of  children,  and  mightily  beloved  by  them  in 
turn ;  and,  though  keenly  alive  to  the  ludicrous,  without  a 
grain  of  malice  in  her.  I  remember  how,  about  this  time, 
when,  assisted  by  some  three  or  four  boys  more,  I  had  suc- 
ceeded in  building  a  huge  house,  full  four  feet  long  and  three 
feet  high,  that  contained  us  all,  and  a  fire,  and  a  great  deal  of 
smoke  to  boot,  Miss  Bond,  the  authoress,  came,  and  looked  in 
upon  us,  first  through  the  little  door,  and  then  down  through 
the  chimney,  and  gave  us  kind  words,  and  seemed  to  enjov 
our  enjoyment  very  much ;  and  how  we  all  deemed  her  visit 
one  of  the  greatest  events  that  could  possibly  have  taken  place. 
She  had  been  intimate  with  the  parents  of  Sir  Walter  Scott ; 
and,  on  the  appearance  of  Sir  Walter's  first  publication,  the 
''  Minstrelsey  of  the  Scottish  Border,"  she  had  taken  a  fit  of 


OK,  THE   STOKY   OF   MY   EDUCATION.  83 

enthusiasm,  and  written  to  him ;  and,  when  ir.  the  cold  par- 
oxysm, and  inclined  to  think  she  had  done  something  foolish, 
had  received  from  Sir  Walter,  then  Mr.  Scott,  a  character- 
istically warm-hearted  reply.  She  experienced  much  kind- 
ness at  his  hands  ever  after ;  and  when  she  herself  became  an 
author,  she  dedicated  her  book  to  him.  He  now  and  then 
procured  boarders  for  her ;  and  when,  after  leaving  Cromarty 
for  Edinburgh,  she  opened  a  school  in  the  latter  place,  and  got 
on  with  but  indifferent  success,  Sir  Walter — though  struggling 
with  his  own  difficulties  at  the  time — sent  her  an  enclosure  of 
ten  pounds,  to  scare,  as  he  said  in  his  note,  "  the  wolf  from 
the  door."  But  Miss  Bond,  like  the  original  of  his  own 
Jeanie  Deans,  was  a  "  proud  bodie ;"  and  the  ten  pounds 
were  returned,  with  an  intimation  to  the  effect  that  the  wolf 
had  not  yet  come  to  the  door.  Poor  lady  !  I  suspect  he  came 
to  the  door  at  last.  Like  many  other  writers  of  books,  her 
voyage  through  life  skirted,  for  the  greater  part  of  the  way, 
the  bleak  lee  shore  of  necessity ;  and  it  cost  her  not  a  little 
skilful  steering  at  times  to  give  the  strand  a  respectable  offing. 
And  in  her  solitary  old  age,  she  seemed  to  have  got  fairly 
aground.  There  was  an  attempt  made  by  some  of  her  former 
pupils  to  raise  money  enough  to  purchase  for  her  a  small  annu- 
ity ;  but  when  the  design  was  in  progress,  I  heard  of  her  death. 
She  illustrated  in  her  life  the  remark  recorded  by  herself  in  her 
"  Letters,"  as  made  by  an  humble  friend  : — "  It's  no  an  easy 
thing,  Mem,  for  a  woman  to  go  through  the  world  without  a 
head,1''  i.  e.,  single  and  unprotected. 

From  some  unexplained  cause,  Miss  Bond's  patronage  never 
reached  me.  I  am  sure  the  good  lady  intended  giving  me 
lessons  in  both  drawing  and  composition ;  for  she  had  said  it, 
and  her  heart  was  a  kind  one ;  but  then  her  time  was  too  much 
occupied  to  admit  of  her  devoting  an  occasional  hour  to  myself 
alone;  and  as  for  introducing  me  to  her  young-lady  classes,  in 
my  rough  garments,  ever  greatly  improved  the  wrong  way  by 
my  explorations  in  the  ebb  and  the  peat-moss,  and  frayed,  at 
times,  beyond  even  my  mother's  ability  of  repair,  by  warping 
to  the  tops  of  great  trees,  and  by  my  feats  as  a  cragsman, — 
5 


84 

that  would  have  been  a  piece  of  Jack-Cadeism,  on  which,  then 
or  now,  no  village  governess  could  have  ventured.  And  so  I 
was  left  to  get  on  in  verse  and  picture-making  quite  in  the  wild 
way,  without  care  or  culture. 

My  schoolfellows  liked  my  stories  well  enough, — better,  at 
.  east  on  most  occasions,  than  they  did  the  lessons  of  the  mas- 
ter ;  but,  beyond  the  common  ground  of  enjoyment  which  these 
extempore  compositions  furnished  to  both  the  "  sennachic,"  and 
his  auditors,  our  tracts  of  amusement  lay  widely  apart.  I  dis- 
liked, as  I  have  said,  the  yearly  cock-fight — found  no  pleasure 
in  cat-killing,  or  in  teasing  at  nights,  or  on  the  street,  the 
cross-tempered,  half-witted  eccentrics  of  the  village, — usually 
kept  aloof  from  the  ordinary  play-grounds,  and  very  rarely 
mingled  in  the  old  hereditary  games.  On  the  other  hand,  with 
the  exception  of  my  little  friend  of  the  cave,  who,  even  after 
that  disastrous  incident,  evinced  a  tendency  to  trust  and  follow 
me  as  implicitly  as  before,  my  schoolmates  cared  as  little  for 
my  amusements  as  I  did  for  theirs ;  and,  having  the  majority 
on  their  side,  they  of  course  voted  mine  to  be  the  foolish  ones. 
And  certainly  a  run  of  ill-luck  followed  me  in  my  sports  about 
this  time,  that  did  give  some  show  of  reason  to  their  decision. 

In  the  course  of  my  book-hunting,  I  had  fallen  in  with  two 
old-fashioned  military  treatises,  part  of  the  small  library  of  a 
retired  officer,  lately  deceased,  of  which  the  one  entitled  the 
"  Military  Medley,"  discussed  the  whole  art  of  marshalling 
troops,  and  contained  numerous  plans,  neatly  colored,  of  bat- 
talions drawn  up  in  all  possible  forms,  to  meet  all  possible  exi- 
gencies ;  while  the  other,  which  also  abounded  in  prints,  treated 
of  the  noble  science  of  fortification  according  to  the  system  of 
Vauban.  I  pored  over  both  works  with  much  perseverance  ; 
and,  regarding  them  as  admirable  toy-books,  set  myself  to  con- 
struct, on  a  very  small  scale,  some  of  the  toys  with  which  they 
specially  dealt.  The  sea-shore  in  the  immediate  neighbor- 
hood of  the  town  appeared  to  my  inexperienced  eye  an  excel- 
lent field  for  the  carrying  on  of  a  campaign.  The  sea-sand 
I  found  quite  coherent  enough,  when  still  moistened  by  the 
waters  of  the  receding  tide,  to  stand  up  in  the  form  of  towers 


85 

and  bastions,  and  long  lines  of  rampart ;  and  there  was  one  of 
the  commonest  of  the  Littorinidce, — Littorina  UlloraUs,  that  in 
one  of  its  varieties  is  of  a  rich  yellow  color,  and  in  another  of 
a  bluish-green  tint, — which  supplied  me  with  soldiers  enough 
to  execute  all  the  evolutions  figured  and  described  in  the 
"  Medley."  The  warmly-hued  yellow  shells  represented  Brit- 
ons in  their  scarlet, — the  more  dingy  ones,  the  French  in  their 
uniforms  of  dirty  blue  ;  well-selected  specimens  of  Purpura 
lapillus,  just  tipped  on  their  backs  with  a  speck  of  paint,  blue 
or  red,  from  my  box,  made  capital  dragoons  ;  while  a  few 
dozens  of  the  slender  pyramidal  shells  of  Turritella  communis 
formed  complete  parks  of  artillery.  With  such  unlimited 
stores  of  the  materiel  of  war  at  my  command,  I  was  enabled, 
more  fortunate  than  Uncle  Toby  of  old,  to  fight  battles  and 
conduct  retreats,  assault  and  defend,  build  up  fortifications  and 
then  batter  them  down  again,  at  no  expense  at  all ;  and  the 
only  drawback  on  such  a  vast  amount  of  advantage  that  I 
could  at  first  perceive,  consisted  in  the  circumstance,  that  the 
shore  was  exceedingly  open  to  observation,  and  that  my  new 
amusements,  when  surveyed  at  a  little  distance,  did  greatly 
resemble  those  of  the  very  young  children  of  the  place,  who 
used  to  repair  to  the  same  arenaceous  banks  and  shingle-beds, 
to  bake  dirt-pies  in  the  sand,  or  range  lines  of  shells  on  little 
shelves  of  stone,  imitative  of  the  crockery  cupboard  at  home. 
Not  only  my  school-fellows,  but  also  some  of  their  parents, 
evidently  arrived  at  the  conclusion  that  the  two  sets  of  amuse- 
ments— mine  and  those  of  the  little  children — were  identical ; 
for  the  elder  folk  said,  that  "  in  their  time,  poor  Francie  had 
been  just  such  another  boy,  and  every  one  saw  what  he  had 
come  to  ;"  while  the  younger,  more  energetic  in  their  mani- 
festations, and  more  intolerant  of  folly,  have  even  paused  in 
their  games  of  marbles,  or  ceased  spinning  their  tops,  to  hoo* 
at  me  from  a  safe  distance.  But  the  campaign  went  on  ;  and 
I  solaced  myself  by  reflecting,  that  neither  the  big  folk  nor  the 
little  folk  could  bring  a  battalion  of  troops  across  a  bridge 
of  boats  in  the  face  of  an  enemy,  or  knew  that  a  regular  for- 
tificat'on  could  be  constructed  on  only  a  regular  polygon. 


86  MY   SCHOOLS   AND   SCHOOLMASTEES  J 

I  at  length  discovered,  however,  that  as  a  sea-shore  is  always 
a  sloping  plane,  and  the  Cromarty  beach,  in  particular,  a  plane 
of  a  rather  steep  slope,  it  afforded  no  proper  site  for  a  fortress 
fitted  to  stand  a  protracted  siege,  seeing  that,  fortify  the  place 
as  I  might,  it  could  be  easily  commanded  by  batteries  raised 
on  the  higher  side.  And  so,  fixing  upon  a  grassy  knoll  among 
the  woods,  in  the  immediate  neighborhood  of  a  scaur  of  boul- 
der clay,  capped  by  a  thick  stratum  of  sand,  as  a  much  better 
scene  of  operations,  I  took  possession  of  the  knoll  somewhat 
irregularly ;  and  carrying  to  it  large  quantities  of  sand  from 
the  scaur,  converted  it  into  the  site  of  a  magnificent  strong- 
hold. First,  I  erected  an  ancient  castle,  consisting  of  four 
towers  built  on  a  rectangular  base,  and  connected  by  straight 
curtains  embrasured  a-top.  I  then  surrounded  the  castle  by 
out-works  in  the  modern  style,  consisting  of  greatly  lower 
curtains  than  the  ancient  ones,  flanked  by  numerous  bastions, 
and  bristling  with  cannon  of  huge  calibre,  made  of  the  joint- 
ed stalks  of  the  hemlock  ;  while  in  advance  of  these  I  laid 
down  ravelins,  horn-works,  and  tenailles.  I  was  vastly  de- 
lighted with  my  work  ;  it  would,  I  was  sure,  be  no  easy  mat- 
ter to  reduce  such  a  fortress  ;  but  observing  an  eminence  in 
the  immediate  neighborhood,  which  could,  I  thought,  be  occu- 
pied by  a  rather  annoying  battery,  I  was  deliberating  how  I 
might  best  take  possession  of  it  by  a  redoubt,  when  out  start- 
ed from  behind  a  tree,  the  factor  of  the  property  on  which  I 
was  trespassing,  and  rated  me  soundly  for  spoiling  the  grass 
in  a  manner  so  wantonly  mischievous.  Horn-work  and  half- 
moon,  tower  and  bastion,  proved  of  no  manner  of  effect  in  re- 
pelling an  attack  of  a  kind  so  little  anticipated.  I  did  think 
that  the  factor,  who  was  not  only  an  intelligent  man,  but  had 
also  seen  much  service  in  his  day  on  the  town  links,  as  the 
holder  of  a  commission  in  the  Cromarty  volunteers,  might  have 
perceived  that  I  was  laboring  on  scientific  principles,  and  so 
deem  me  worthy  of  some  tolerance  on  that  account ;  but  I  sup- 
pose he  did  not;  though,  to  be  sure,  his  scold  died  out  good- 
naturedly  enough  in  the  end,  and  I  saw  him  laugh  as  he  turn- 
ed away.     But  so  it  was,  that  in  the  extremity  of  my  mor- 


87 

tincation,  I  gave  up  generalship  and  bastion-building  for  the 
time ;  though,  alas,  my  next  amusement  must  have  worn  in 
the  eyes  of  my  youthful  compeers  as  suspicious  an  aspect  as 
either. 

My  friend  of  the  cave  had  lent  me  what  I  had  never  seen 
before, — a  fine  quarto  edition  of  Anson's  Voyages,  containing 
the  original  prints  (my  father's  copy  had  only  the  maps)  ; 
among  the  others,  Mr.  Brett's  elaborate  delineation  of  that 
strangest  of  vessels,  a  proa  of  the  Ladrone  Islands.  I  was  much 
struck  by  the  singularity  of  the  construction  of  a  bark  that, 
while  its  head  and  stern  were  exactly  alike,  had  sides  that  to- 
tally differed  from  each  other,  and  that,  with  the  wind  upon 
the  beam,  outsailed,  it  was  said,  all  other  Vessels  in  the  world  ; 
and  having  the  command  of  the  little  shop  in  which  my  Uncle 
Sandy  made  occasional  carts  and  wheelbarrows  when  unem- 
ployed abroad,  I  set  myself  to  construct  a  miniature  proa,  on 
the  model  given  in  the  print,  and  succeeded  in  fabricating  a 
very  extraordinary  proa  indeed.  While  its  lee  side  was  per- 
pendicular as  a  wall,  its  windward  one,  to  which  there  was  an 
outrigger  attached,  resembled  that  of  a  flat-bottomed  boat ; 
head  and  stern  were  exactly  alike,  so  as  to  fit  each  for  per- 
forming in  turn  the  part  of  either ;  a  movable  yard,  which 
supported  the  sail,  had  to  be  shifted  towards  the  end  convert- 
ed into  the  stern  for  the  time,  at  each  tack  ;  while  the  sail  it- 
self—a most  uncouth-looking  thing — formed  a  scalene  trian- 
gle. Such  was  the  vessel — some  eighteen  inches  long  or  so 
— with  which  I  startled  from  their  propriety  the  mimic  navi- 
gators of  a  horse-pond  in  the  neighborhood, — all  very  master- 
ly critics  in  all  sorts  of  barks  and  barges  known  on  the  Scot- 
tish coast.     According  to  Campbell, 

"  'Twas  a  thing  beyond 
Description  wretched  ;  such  a  wherry. 
Perhaps,  near  ventured  on  a  pond, 
Or  crossed  a  ferry." 

And  well  did  my  fellows  appreciate  its  extreme  ludicrousness. 
It  was  certainly  rash  to  "  venture"  it  on  this  especial  "  pond ;" 


88  MY   SCHOOLS  AND  SCHOOLMASTERS; 

for,  greatly  to  the  damage  of  the  rigging,  it  was  fairly  pelted 
off,  and  I  was  sent  to  test  elsewhere  its  sailing  qualities,  which 
were,  as  I  ascertained,  not  very  remarkable  after  all.  And 
thus,  after  a  manner  so  unworthy,  were  my  essays  in  strategy 
and  bark-building  received  by  a  censorious  age,  that  judged 
ere  it  knew.  Were  I  sentimental,  which  luckily  I  am  not,  I 
might  well  exclaim,  in  the  very  vein  of  Rousseau,  Alas  !  it 
has  been  ever  the  misfortune  of  my  life  that,  save  by  a  few 
friends,  I  have  never  been  understood  ! 

I  was  evidently  out-Francieing  Francie ;  and  the  parents  of 
my  young  friend,  who  saw  that  I  had  acquired  considerable  in- 
fluence over  him,  and  were  afraid  lest  I  should  make  another 
Francie  of  him,  had  become  naturally  enough  desirous  to 
break  off  our  intimacy,  when  there  occurred  an  unlucky  acci- 
dent, which  served  materially  to  assist  them  in  the  design. 
My  friend's  father  was  the  master  of  a  large  trading  smack, 
which  in  war  times  carried  a  few  twelve-pounders,  and  was 
furnished  with  a  small  magazine  of  powder  and  shot ;  and  my 
friend  having  secured  for  himself  from  the  general  stock, 
through  the  connivance  of  the  ship-boy,  an  entire  cannon  car- 
tridge, containing  some  two  or  three  pounds  of  gunpowder,  I 
was,  of  course,  let  into  the  secret,  and  invited  to  share  in  the 
sport  and  the  spoil.  We  had  a  glorious  day  together  in  his 
mother's  garden ;  never  before  did  such  magnificent  volcanoes 
break  forth  out  of  mole-hills,  or  were  plots  of  daisies  and  vio- 
lets so  ruthlessly  scorched  and  torn  by  the  explosion  of  deep- 
laid  mines ;  and  though  a  few  mishaps  did  happen  to  over- 
forward  fingers,  and  to  eye-brows  that  were  in  the  way,  our 
amusements  passed  off  innoculously  on  the  whole,  and  even- 
ing saw  nearly  the  half  of  our  precious  store  unexhausted. 
It  was  garnered  up  by  my  friend  in  an  unsuspected  corner  of 
the  garret  in  which  he  slept,  and  would  have  been  safe,  had  he 
iOt  been  seized,  when  going  to  bed,  with  a  yearning  desire  to 
survey  his  treasure  by  candle-light ;  when  an  unlucky  spark 
from  the  flame  exploded  the  whole.  He  was  so  sadly  burnt 
about  the  face  and  eyes  as  to  be  blind  for  several  days  after ; 
but,  amid  smoke  and  confusion,  he  gallantly  bolted  his  garret- 


89 

door,  and,  while  the  inmates  of  the  household,  startled  by  the 
shock  and  the  noise,  came  rushing  up  stairs,  sturdily  refused 
to  let  any  of  them  in.  Volumes  of  gunpowder  reek  issued 
from  every  crack  and  cranny,  and  his  mother  and  sisters  were 
prodigiously  alarmed.  At  length,  however,  he  capitulated, — 
terms  unknown ;  and  I  next  morning  heard  with  horror  and 
dismay  of  the  accident.  It  had  been  matter  of  agreement  be- 
tween us  on  the  previous  day,  mainly  in  order  to  screen  the 
fine  fellow  of  a  ship-boy,  that  I  should  be  regarded  as  th 
owner  of  the  powder  ;  but  here  was  a  consequence  on  which 
I  had  not  calculated  ;  and  the  strong  desire  to  see  my  poor 
friend  was  dashed  by  the  dread  of  being  held  responsible  by 
his  parents  and  sisters  for  the  accident.  And  so,  more  than  a 
week  elapsed  ere  I  could  muster  up  courage  enough  to  visit 
him.  I  was  coldly  received  by  his  mother,  and,  what  vexed 
me  to  the  heart,  coldly  received  by  himself;  and  suspecting 
that  he  had  been  making  an  ungenerous  use  of  our  late  treaty, 
I  took  leave  in  high  dudgeon,  and  came  away.  My  suspi- 
cions, however,  wronged  him  ;  he  had  stoutly  denied,  as  I  af- 
terwards learned,  that  I  had  any  share  in  the  powder ;  but  his 
friends  deeming  the  opportunity  a  good  one  for  breaking  with 
me,  had  compelled  hirn,  very  unwillingly,  and  after  much  re- 
sistance, to  give  me  up.  And  from  this  period  more  than 
two  years  elapsed,  though  our  hearts  beat  quick  and  high 
every  time  we  accidentally  met,  ere  we  exchanged  a  single 
word.  On  one  occasion,  however,  shortly  after  the  accident, 
we  did  exchange  letters.  I  wrote  to  him  from  the  school-form, 
when,  of  course,  I  ought  to  have  been  engaged  with  my 
tasks,  a  stately  epistle,  in  the  style  of  the  billets  in  the 
"  Female  Quixote,"  which  began,  I  remember,  as  follows  : — 
"  I  once  thought  I  had  a  friend  whom  I  could  rely  upon  ;  but 
experience  tells  me  he  was  only  nominal.  For,  had  he  been  a 
real  friend,  no  accident  could  have  interfered  with,  or  arbi- 
trary command  annihilated  his  affection,"  &c,  &c.  As  I  was 
rather  an  indifferent  scribe  at  the  time,  one  of  the  lads  known 
as  the  "  copperplate  writers"  of  the  class,  made  for  me  a  fair 
copy  of  my  lucubration,  full  of  all  manner  of  elegant  dashes, 


90  MY  SCHOOLS  AND  SCHOOLMASTERS  J 

and  n  which  the  spelling  of  every  word  was  scrupulously  test- 
ed by  the  dictionary.  And  in  due  course  I  received  a  care- 
fully engrossed  note  in  reply,  of  which  the  manual  portion 
was  performed  by  my  old  companion,  but  the  composition,  as 
he  afterwards  told  me,  elaborated  by  some  one  else.  He  as- 
sured me  he  was  still  my  friend,  but  that  there  was  "  certain 
circumstances"  which  would  prevent  us  from  meeting  for  the 
future  on  our  old  terms.  We  were,  however,  destined  to 
meet  pretty  often  in  the  future,  notwithstanding ;  and  narrow- 
ly missed  going  to  the  bottom  together  many  years  after,  in 
the  Floating  Manse,  grown  infirm  in  her  nether  parts  at  the 
time,  when  he  was  the  outed  minister  of  Small  Isles,  and  1 
editor  of  the  Witness  newspaper. 

I  had  a  maternal  aunt  long  settled  in  the  Highlands  of 
Sutherland,  who  was  so  much  older  than  her  sister,  my  moth- 
er, that  when  nursing  her  oldest  boy,  she  had,  when  on  a  visit 
to  the  low  country,  assisted  also  in  nursing  her.  The  boy  had 
shot  up  into  a  very  clever  lad,  who,  having  gone  to  seek  his 
fortune  in  the  south,  rose,  through  the  several  degrees  of  clerk- 
ship in  a  mercantile  firm,  to  be  the  head  of  a  commercial  house 
of  his  own,  which,  though  ultimately  unsuccessful,  seemed  for 
some  four  or  five  years  to  be  in  a  fair  way  of  thriving.  For 
about  three  of  these,  the  portion  of  the  profit  which  fell  to  my 
cousin's  share  did  not  fall  short  of  fifteen  hundred  pounds  per 
annum  ;  aud  on  visiting  his  parents  in  their  Highland  home  in 
the  heyday  of  his  prosperity,  after  an  absence  of  years,  it  was 
found  that  he  had  a  great  many  friends  in  his  native  district 
on  whom  he  had  not  calculated,  and  of  a  class  that  had  not 
been  greatly  in  the  habit  of  visiting  his  mother's  cottage,  but 
who  now  came  to  lunch,  and  dine,  and  take  their  wine  with 
him,  and  who  seemed  to  value  and  admire  him  very  much. 
My  a  int,  who  was  little  accustomed  to  receive  high  company, 
and  found  herself,  like  Martha  of  old,  "cumbered  about  much 
serving,'''  urgently  besought  my  mother,  who  was  young  and 
active  at  the  time,  to  visit  and  assist  her ;  and,  infinitely  to  my 
delight,  1  was  included  in  the  invitation.  The  place  was  not 
much  above  thirty  miles  from  Cromarty  ;  but  then  it  was  in 


OR,   THE   STORY  OF  MY  EDUCATION.  91 

the  true  Highlands,  which  I  had  never  before  seen,  save  on 
the  distant  horizon ;  and,  to  a  boy  who  had  to  walk  all  the 
way.  even  thirty  miles,  in  an  age  when  railways  were  not,  and 
ere  even  mail  gigs  had  penetrated  so  far,  represented  a  jour- 
ney of  no  inconsiderable  distance.  My  mother,  though  rather 
a  delicate-looking  woman,  walked  remarkable  well ;  and  early 
on  the  evening  of  the  second  day,  we  reached  together  my 
aunt's  cottage,  in  the  ancient  Barony  of  Gruids.  It  was  a 
low,  long,  dingy  edifice  of  turf,  four  or  five  rooms  in  length, 
but  only  one  in  height,  that,  lying  along  a  gentle  acclivity, 
somewhat  resembled  at  a  distance  a  huge  black  snail  creeping 
up  the  bill.  As  the  lower  apartment  was  occupied  by  my 
uncle's  half-dozen  milk-cows,  the  declination  of  the  floor,  con- 
sequent on  the  nature  of  the  site,  proved  of  signal  importance, 
from  the  free  drainage  which  it  secured ;  the  second  apart- 
ment, reckoning  upwards,  which  wras  of  considerable  size, 
formed  the  sitting-room  of  the  family,  and  had,  in  the  old 
Highland  style,  its  fire  full  in  the  middle  of  the  floor,  without 
back  or  sides ;  so  that,  like  a  bonfire  kindled  in  the  open  air, 
all  the  inmates  could  sit  around  it  in  a  wride  circle, — the  wo- 
men invariably  ranged  on  the  one  side,  and  the  men  on  the 
other  ;  the  apartment  beyond  was  partitioned  into  small  and 
very  dark  bed  rooms  :  while,  further  on  still,  there  was  a  closet 
with  a  little  window  in  it,  which  was  assigned  to  my  mother 
and  me;  and  beyond  all  lay  what  was  emphatically  "the 
room,"  as  it  was  built  of  stone,  and  had  both  window  and 
chimney,  with  chairs,  and  table,  and  chest  of  drawers,  a  large 
box-bed,  and  a  small  but  well-filled  bookcase.  And  "the 
room"  was,  of  course,  for  the  time,  my  cousin  the  merchant's 
apartment,  his  dormitory  at  night,  and  the  hospitable  refec- 
tory in  which  he  entertained  his  friends  by  day. 

My  aunt's  family  was  one  of  solid  worth.  Her  husband, — 
a  compactly-built,  stout-limbed,  elderly  Highlander,  rather  be- 
low the  middle  size,  of  grave  and  somewhat  melancholy  aspect, 
but  in  reality  of  a  temperament  rather  cheerful  than  otherwise, 
— had  been  somewhat  wild  in  his  young  days.  He  had  been 
a  good  shot  and  a  skilful  angler,  and  had  danced  at  bridals, 


92  MY  SCHOOLS  AND    SCHOOLMASTERS; 

and,  as  was  common  in  the  Highlands  at  the  time,  at  lyke- 
wakes ;  nay,  on  one  occasion  he  had  succeeded  in  inducing  a 
new-made  widow  to  take  the  floor  in  a  Strathspey,  beside  her 
husband's  corpse,  when  every  one  else  had  foiled  to  bring  her 
up,  by  roguishly  remarking,  in  her  hearing,  that  whoever  else 
might  have  refused  to  dance  at  poor  Donald's  death-wake,  he 
little  thought  it  would  have  been  her.  But  a  great  change  had 
passed  over  him,  and  he  was  now  a  staid,  thoughtful,  God- 
fearing man,  much  respected  in  the  Barony  for  honest  worth 
and  quiet,  unobtrusive  consistency  of  character.  His  wife 
had  been  brought,  at  an  early  age,  under  the  influence  of 
Donald  Roy's  ring,  and  had,  like  her  mother,  been  the  means 
of  introducing  the  vitalities  of  religion  into  her  household 
They  had  two  other  sons  besides  the  merchant, — both  well- 
built,  robust  men,  somewhat  taller  than  their  father,  and  of 
such  character,  that  one  of  my  Cromarty  cousins,  in  making 
out  his  way,  by  dint  of  frequent  and  sedulous  inquiry,  to  their 
dwelling,  found  the  general  verdict  of  the  district  embodied 
in  the  very  bad  English  of  a  poor  old  woman,  who,  after  doing 
her  best  to  direct  him,  certified  her  knowledge  of  the  house- 
hold by  remarking,  "  It's  a  goot  mistress ; — it's  a  goot  maister ; 
— it's  a  goot,  goot  two  lads."  The  elder  of  the  two  brothers 
superintended,  and  partly  wrought,  his  father's  little  farm  ;  for 
the  father  himself  found  employment  enough  in  acting  as  a 
sort  of  humble  factor  for  the  proprietor  of  the  Barony,  who 
lived  at  a  distance,  and  had  no  dwelling  upon  the  land.  The 
younger  was  a  mason  and  slater,  and  was  usually  employed, 
in  the  working  seasons,  at  a  distance ;  but  in  winter,  and  on 
this  occasion,  for  a  few  weeks  during  the  visit  of  his  brother 
the  merchant,  he  resided  with  his  father.  Both  were  men  of 
marked  individuality  of  character.  The  elder,  Hugh,  was  an 
ingenious,  self-taught  mechanic,  who  used,  in  the  long  white* 
evenings,  to  fashion  a  number  of  curious  little  articles  by  the 
fireside, — among  the  rest,  Highland  snuff-mulls,  with  which  he 
supplied  all  his  friends ;  and  he  was  at  this  time  engaged  in 
building  for  his  father  a  Highland  barn,  and,  to  vary  the  work, 
tibricating  for  him  a  Highland  plough.   The  younger,  George, 


93 

who  had  wrought  for  a  few  years  at  his  trade  in  the  south  of 
Scotland,  war/  a  great  reader,  wrote  very  tolerable  prose,  and 
verse  which,  f  not  poetry,  to  which  he  made  no  pretensions, 
was  at  least  quaintly-turned  rhyme.  He  had,  besides,  a  com- 
petent knowledge  of  geometry,  and  wras  skilled  in  architec- 
tural drawing ;  and — strange  accomplishment  for  a  Celt — he 
was  an  aelept  in  the  noble  science  of  self-defence.  But  George 
never  sought  out  quarrels ;  and  such  was  his  amount  of  bone 
and  muscle,  and  such  the  expression  of  manly  resolution 
stamped  on  his  countenance,  that  they  never  came  in  his  way 
unsought. 

At  the  close  of  the  day,  when  the  members  of  the  house- 
hold had  assembled  in  a  wride  circle  round  the  fire,  my  uncle 
"  took  the  Book,"  and  I  witnessed,  for  the  first  time,  family 
worship  conducted  in  Gaelic.  There  was,  I  found,  an  interest- 
ing peculiarity  in  one  portion  of  the  services  which  he  con- 
ducted. He  was,  as  I  have  said,  an  elderly  man,  and  had 
worshipped  in  his  family  ere  Dr.  Stewart's  Gaelic  Translation 
of  the  Scriptures  had  been  introduced  into  the  country  ;  and 
as  he  possessed  in  those  days  only  the  English  Bible,  while 
his  domestics  understood  only  Gaelic,  he  had  to  acquire  the 
art,  not  uncommon  in  Sutherland  at  the  time,  of  translating  the 
English  chapter  for  them,  as  he  read,  into  their  native  tongue ; 
and  this  he  had  learned  to  do  with  such  ready  fluency,  that  no 
one  could  have  guessed  it  to  be  other  than  a  Gaelic  work  from 
which  he  was  reading.  Nor  had  the  introduction  of  Dr. 
Stewart's  Translation  rendered  the  practice  obsolete  in  his 
household.  His  Gaelic  wTas  Sutherlandshire  Gaelic,  wrhereas 
that  of  Dr.  Stewart  was  Argyleshire  Gaelic.  His  family  un- 
derstood his  rendering  better,  in  consequence,  than  that  of  the 
Doctor;  and  so  he  continued  to  translate  from  his  English 
Bible  ad  aiierturwm  libri,  many  years  after  the  Gaelic  edition 
lad  been  spread  over  the  country.  The  concluding  evening 
prayer  was  one  of  great  solemnity  and  unction.  I  was  un- 
acquainted with  the  language  in  which  it  was  couched;  but 
it  was  impossible  to  avoid  being  struck,  notwithstanding,  with 
;ts  wrestling  earnestness  and  fervor.     The  man  who  poured 


94 

it  fortn  evidently  believed  there  was  an  unseen  ear  open  tj>  it, 
and  an  all-seeing  presence  in  the  place,  before  whom  every  se- 
cret thought  lay  exposed.  The  entire  scene  was  a  deeply  im- 
pressive one ;  and  when  I  saw,  in  witnessing  the  celebration 
of  High  Mass  in  a  Popish  cathedral  many  years  after,  the  altai 
suddenly  enveloped  in  a  dim  and  picturesque  obscurity,  amid 
which  the  curling  smoke  of  the  incense  ascended,  and  heard 
the  musically-modulated  prayer  sounding  in  the  distance  from  . 
within  the  screen,  my  thoughts  reverted  to  the  rude  Highland  \ 
cottage,  where,  amid  solemnities  not  theatric,  the  red  umbry 
light  of  the  fire  fell  with  uncertain  glimmer  upon  dark  walls, 
and  bare  black  rafters,  and  kneeling  forms,  and  a  pale  ex- 
panse of  dense  smoke,  that,  filling  the  upper  portion  of  the 
roof,  overhung  the  floor  like  a  ceiling,  and  there  arose  amid 
the  gloom  the  sounds  of  prayer  truly  God-directed,  and  poured 
out  from  the  depths  of  the  heart ;  and  I  felt  that  the  stoled  priest 
of  the  cathedral  was  merely  an  artist,  though  a  skilful  one,  but 
that  in  the  "  priest  and  father  "  of  the  cottage  there  were  the 
truth  and  reality  from  which  the  artist  drew.  No  bolt  was 
drawn  across  the  outer  door  as  we  retired  for  the  night.  The 
philosophic  Biot,  when  employed  with  his  experiments  on  the 
seconds  pendulum,  resided  for  several  months  in  one  of  the 
smaller  Shetland  islands ;  and,  fresh  from  the  troubles  of 
France, — his  imagination  bearing  about  with  it,  if  I  may  so 
speak,  the  stains  of  the  guillotine, — the  state  of  trustful  secu- 
rity in  which  he  found  the  simple  inhabitants  filled  him  with 
astonishment.  "  Here,  during  the  twenty-five  years  in  which 
Europe  has  been  devouring  herself,"  he  exclaimed,  "  the  door 
of  the  house  I  inhabit  has  remained  open  day  and  night."  The 
interior  of  Sutherland  was  at  the  time  of  my  visit  in  a  simi- 
lar condition.  The  door  of  my  uncle's  cottage,  unfurnished 
with  lock  or  bar,  opened,  like  that  of  the  hermit  in  the  ballad, 
with  a  latch ;  but,  unlike  that  of  the  hermit,  it  was  not  be- 
cause there  were  no  stores  within  to  demand  the  care  of  the 
master,  but  because  at  that  comparatively  recent  period  the 
crime  of  theft  was  unknown  in  the  district. 

I  rose  early  next  morning,  when  the  dew  wras  yet  heavy  on 


95 

grass  and  lichen,  curious  to  explore  a  locality  so  new  to  me. 
The  tract,  though  a  primary  one,  forms  one  of  the  tamer  gneiss 
districts  of  Scotland  ;  and  I  found  the  nearer  hills  compara- 
tively low  and  confluent,  and  the  broad  valley  in  which  lay 
my  uncle's  cottage,  flat,  open,  and  unpromising.  Still  there 
were  a  few  points  to  engage  me ;  and  the  more  I  attracted 
myself  to  them,  the  more  did  their  interest  grow.  The  western 
slopes  of  the  valley  are  mottled  by  grassy  tomhans, — the  mo 
raines  of  some  ancient  glacier,  around  and  over  which  theie 
rose,  at  this  period,  a  low  widely-spreading  wood  of  birch, 
hazel,  and  mountain  ash, — of  hazel,  with  its  nuts  fast  filling 
at  the  time,  and  of  mountain  ash,  with  its  berries  glowing 
bright  in  orange  and  scarlet.  In  looking  adown  the  hollow,  a 
group  of  the  green  tomhans  might  be  seen  relieved  against  the 
blue  hills  of  Ross  ;  in  looking  upwards,  a  solitary  birch-cover- 
ed hillock  of  a  similar  origin,  but  larger  proportions,  stood 
strongly  out  against  the  calm  waters  of  Loch  Shin  and  the  pur- 
ple peaks  of  the  distant  Ben-Hope.  In  the  bottom  of  the  valley, 
close  beside  my  uncle's  cottage,  I  marked  several  low  swellings 
of  the  rock  beneath,  rising  above  the  general  level ;  and,  ranged 
along  these,  there  were  groupes  of  what  seemed  to  be  huge 
Doulder  stones,  save  that  they  were  less  rounded  and  water- 
worn  than  ordinary  boulders,  and  were,  what  groupes  of  boul- 
ders rarely  are,  all  of  one  quality.  And  on  examination  I  as- 
certained that  some  of  their  number,  which  stood  up  like 
broken  obelisks,  tall,  and  comparatively  narrow  of  base,  and 
all  hoary  with  moss  and  lichen,  were  actually  still  connected 
with  the  mass  of  rock  below.  They  were  the  wasted  upper 
portions  of  vast  dikes  and  veins  of  a  gray,  large-grained  sienite, 
that  traverse  the  fundamental  gneiss  of  the  valley,  and  which 
I  found  veined,  in  turn,  by  threads  and  seams  of  a  white 
quartz,  abounding  in  drusy  cavities,  thickly  lined  along  their 
sides  with  sprig  crystals.  Never  had  I  seen  such  lovely  crys- 
tals on  the  shores  of  Cromarty,  or  anywhere  else.  They  were 
clear  and  transparent  as  the  purest  spring  water,  furnished 
each  with  six  sides,  and  sharpened  atop  into  six  facets.  Bor- 
rowing one  of  Cousin  George's  hammers,  I  soon  filled  a  little 


96 

box  with  these  gems,  which  even  my  mother  and  aunt  ^ere 
content  to  admire,  as  what  of  old  used,  they  said,  to  be  called 
Bristol  diamonds,  and  set  in  silver  brooches  and  sleeve-buttons. 
Further,  within  less  than  a  hundred  yards  of  the  cottage,  ] 
found  a  lively  little  stream,  brown,  but  clear  as  a  cairngorm 
of  the  purest  water,  and  abounding,  as  I  soon  ascertained,  in 
trout,  lively  and  little  like  itself,  and  gaily  speckled  with 
jcarlet.  It  winded  through  a  flat,  dank  meadow,  never  dis- 
urbed  by  the  plough  ;  for  it  had  been  a  buryipg-ground  of  old, 
and  flat  undressed  stones  lay  thick  amid  the  rank  grass.  And 
in  the  lower  corner,  where  the  old  turf-wall  had  sunk  into  an 
inconspicuous  mound,  there  stood  a  mighty  tree,  all  solitary, 
for  its  fellows  had  long  before  disappeared,  and  so  hollow 
hearted  in  its  corrupt  old  age,  that,  though  it  still  threw  out 
every  season  a  mighty  expanse  of  foliage,  I  was  able  to  creep 
into  a  little  chamber  in  its  trunk,  from  which  I  could  look  out 
through  circular  openings  where  boughs  once  had  been,  and 
listen,  when  a  sudden  shower  came  sweeping  down  the  glen, 
to  the  pattering  of  the  rain-drops  amid  the  leaves.  The  valley 
of  the  Gruids  was  perhaps  not  one  of  the  finest  or  most  beau- 
tiful of  Highland  valleys,  but  it  was  a  very  admirable  place 
after  all ;  and  amid  its  woods,  and  its  rocks,  and  its  tomhans, 
and  at  the  side  of  its  little  trouting  stream,  the  weeks  passed 
delightfully  away. 

My  cousin  William,  the  merchant,  had,  as  I  have  said, 
many  guests ;  but  they  were  all  too  grand  to  take  any  notice 
of  me.  There  was,  however,  one  delightful  man,  who  was 
said  to  know  a  great  deal  about  rocks  and  stones,  that,  having 
heard  of  my  fine  large  crystals,  desired  to  see  both  them  and 
the  boy  who  had  found  them ;  and  I  was  admitted  to  hear 
him  talk  about  granites,  and  marbles,  and  metallic  veins,  and 
the  gems  that  lie  hid  among  the  mountains  in  nooks  and  cran 
nies.  I  am  afraid  I  would  not  now  deem  him  a  very  accom- 
plished mineralogist :  I  remember  enough  of  his  conversation 
to  conclude  that  he  knew  but  little,  and  that  little  not  very 
correctly  ;  but  not  before  Werner  or  Hutt(  in  could  I  have 
bowed  down  with  a  profound   reverence.     He  spoke  of  the 


OR,    THE   STORY   OF   MY   EDUCATION.  97 

marbles  of  Assynt, — of  the  petrifactions  of  Helmsdale  and 
Brora, — of  shells  and  plants  embedded  in  solid  rocks,  and  of 
forest  trees  converted  into  stone  ;  and  my  ears  drank  in  knowl- 
edge eagerly,  as  those  of  the  Queen  of  Sheba  of  old  when  she 
listened  to  Solomon.  But  all  too  soon  did  the  conversation 
change.  My  cousin  was  mighty  in  Gaelic  etymology,  and  so 
was  the  mineralogist ;  and  while  my  cousin  held  that  the  name 
of  the  Barony  of  Gruids  was  derived  from  the  great  hollow 
tree,  the  mineralogist  was  quite  as  certain  that  it  was  derived 
from  its  sienite,  or,  as  he  termed  it,  its  granite,  which  re- 
sembled, he  remarked,  from  the  whiteness  of  its  feldspar,  a 
piece  of  curd.  Gruids,  said  the  one,  means  the  place  of  the 
great  tree  ;  Gruids,  said  the  other,  means  the  place  of  the  cur- 
dled stone.  I  do  not  remember  how  they  settled  the  contro- 
versy ;  but  it  terminated,  by  an  easy  transition,  in  a  discussion 
respecting  the  authenticity  of  Ossian, — a  subject  on  which  they 
were  both  perfectly  agreed.  There  could  exist  no  manner  of 
doubt  regarding  the  fact  that  the  poems  given  to  the  world  by 
Macpherson  had  been  sung  in  the  Highlands  by  Ossian,  the 
son  of  Fingal,  more  than  fourteen  hundred  years  before.  My 
cousin  was  a  devoted  member  of  the  Highland  Society  ;  and 
the  Highland  Society,  in  these  days,  was  very  much  engaged 
in  ascertaining  the  right  cut  of  the  philabeg,  and  in  determin- 
ing the  chronology  and  true  sequence  of  events  in  the  Ossianic 
age. 

Happiness  perfect  and  entire  is,  it  is  said,  not  to  be  enjoyed 
in  this  sublunary  state ;  and  even  in  the  Gruids,  where  there 
was  so  much  to  be  seen,  heard,  and  found  out,  and  where  I  was 
separated  by  more  than  thirty  miles  from  my  Latin, — for  I  had 
brought  none  of  it  from  home  with  me, — this  same  Ossianic 
controversy  rose  like  a  Highland  fog  on  my  horizon,  to  chill 
and  darken  my  hours  of  enjoyment.  My  cousin  possessed 
everything  that  had  been  written  on  the  subject,  including  a 
considerable  amount  of  manuscript  of  his  own  composition  ; 
and  as  Uncle  James  had  inspired  him  with  the  belief  that  1 
could  master  anything  to  which  in  good  earnest  I  set  my  mind, 
he  had  determined  that  it  should  be  no  fault  of  his  if  1  did 


98 

not  become  mighty  in  the  controversy  regarding  the  authen- 
ticity of  Ossian.  This  was  awful.  I  liked  Blair's  Disserta- 
tion well  enough,  nor  did  I  greatly  quarrel  with  that  of 
Karnes ;  and  as  for  Sir  Walter's  critique  in  the  Edinburgh, 
on  the  opposite  side,  I  thought  it  not  only  thoroughly  sensible, 
but,  as  it  furnished  me  with  arguments  against  the  others, 
deeply  interesting  to  boot.  But  there  succeeded  a  vast 
>cean  of  dissertation,  emitted  by  Highland  gentlemen  anc 
fheir  friends,  as  the  dragon  in  the  Apocalypse  emitted  tin 
great  flood  which  the  earth  swallowed  up  ;  and,  when  once 
fairly  embarked  upon  it  I  could  see  no  shore  and  find  no  bot- 
tom. And  so  at  length,  though  very  unwillingly, — for  my 
cousin  was  very  kind, — I  fairly  mutinied  and  struck  work, 
just  as  he  had  began  to  propose  that,  after  mastering  the  au- 
thenticity controversy,  I  should  set  myself  to  acquire  Gaelic, 
in  order  that  I  might  be  able  to  read  Ossian  in  the  original. 
My  cousin  was  not  well  pleased  ;  but  I  did  not  choose  to  ag- 
gravate the  case  by  giving  expression  to  the  suspicion  which, 
instead  of  lessening,  has  rather  grown  upon  me  since,  that  as 
I  possessed  an  English  copy  of  the  poems,  I  had  read  the  true 
Ossian  in  the  original  already.  With  Cousin  George,  how- 
ever, who,  though  strong  on  the  authenticity  side,  liked  a 
joke  rather  better  than  he  did  Ossian,  I  was  more  free  ;  and 
to  him  I  ventured  to  designate  his  brother's  fine  Gaelic  copy 
of  the  poems,  with  a  superb  head  of  the  ancient  bard  affixed, 
as  "  The  Poems  of  Ossian  in  Gaelic,  translated  from  the  orig- 
inal English  by  their  author."  George  looked  grim,  and 
called  me  infidel,  and  then  laughed,  and  said  he  would  tell 
his  brother.  But  he  didn't ;  and  as  I  really  liked  the  poems, 
especially  "  Temora"  and  some  of  the  smaller  pieces,  and  could 
read  them  with  more  real  pleasure  than  the  greater  part  of  the 
Highlanders  who  believed  in  them,  I  did  not  wholly  lose  credi 
with  my  cousin  the  merchant.  He  even  promised  to  present 
me  with  a  finely-bound  edition  of  the  "  Elegant  Extracts,"  in 
three  bulky  octavo  volumes,  whenever  I  should  have  gained 
my  first  prize  at  College ;  but  I  unluckily  failed  to  qualify 
myself  for  the  gift  ;  and  my  copy  of  the  "  Extracts"  I  had  to 


99 

Dure)  ase  for  myself  ten  years  after,  at  a  book-stall,  when 
working  in  the  neighborhood  of  Edinburgh  as  a  journeyman 
mason. 

It  is  not  every  day  one  meets  with  so  genuine  a  Highlander 
as  my  cousin  the  merchant ;  and,  though  he  failed  to  inspire 
me  with  all  his  own  Ossianic  faith  and  zeal,  there  were  some  of 
the  little  old  Celtic  practices  which  he  resuscitated  pro  tempore 
in  his  father's  household,  that  I  learned  to  like  very  much. 
He  restored  the  genuine  Highland  breakfast ;  and,  after  hours 
spent  in  busy  exploration  outside,  I  found  I  could  as  thorough- 
ly admire  the  groaning  table,  with  its  cheese,  and  its  trout,  and 
its  cold  meat,  as  even  the  immortal  Lexicographer  himself. 
Some  of  the  dishes,  too,  which  he  received  were  at  least  curi- 
ous. There  was  a  supply  of  gradderi-me&l  prepared, — L  c. 
grain  dried  in  a  pot  over  the  fire,  and  then  coarsely  ground  in 
a  handmill, — which  made  cakes  that,  when  they  had  hunger 
for  their  sauce,  could  be  eaten  ;  and  on  more  than  one  occa- 
sion I  shared  in  a  not  unpalatable  sort  of  blood-pudding,  en- 
riched with  butter,  and  well  seasoned  with  pepper  and  salt, 
the  main  ingredient  of  which  was  derived,  through  a  judicious 
use  of  the  lancet,  from  the  yeld  cattle  of  the  farm.  The  prac- 
tice wras  an  ancient,  and  by  no  means  unphilosophical  one.  In 
summer  and  early  autumn  there  is  plenty  of  grass  in  the  High- 
lands ;  but,  of  old  at  least,  there  used  to  be  very  little  grain  in 
it  before  the  beginning  of  October  and  as  the  cattle  could,  in 
consequence,  provide  themselves  with  a  competent  supply  of 
blood  from  the  grass,  when  their  masters,  who  could  not  eat 
crass,  and  had  little  else  that  they  could  eat,  were  able  to  ac- 
quire very  little,  it  was  opportunely  discovered  that  by  making 
a  division  in  this  way  of  the  all-essential  fluid,  accumulated  as 
a  common  stock,  the  circumstances  of  the  cattle  and  their 
owners  could  be  in  some  degree  equalized.  With  these  pecu 
l.iarly  Highland  dishes  there  mingled  others  not  less  genuine, 
— now  and  then  a  salmon  from  the  river,  and  a  haunch  of 
venison  from  the  hill-side, — which  I  relished  better  still ;  and 
if  all  Highlanders  live  but  as  well  in  the  present  day  as  I  did 


100 

during  my   stay  with  my  aunt  and  cousins,  they  would  be 
rather  unreasonable  were  they  greatly  to  complain. 

There  were  some  of  the  other  Highland  restorations  effected 
by  my  cousin  that  pleased  me  much.  He  occasionally  gather- 
ed at  night  around  the  central  Ha'  fire  a  circle  of  the  elderly 
men  of  the  neighborhood,  to  repeat  long-derived  narratives 
of  the  old  clan  feuds  of  the  district,  and  wild  Fingalian  legends ; 
and  though,  of  course,  ignorant  of  the  language  in  which  the 
stories  were  conveyed,  by  taking  my  seat  beside  Cousin  George, 
and  getting  him  to  translate  for  me  in  an  under  tone,  as  the 
narratives  went  on,  I  contrived  to  carry  away  with  me  at  least 
as  much  of  the  clan  stories  and  the  legends  as  I  ever  after 
found  use  for.  The  clan  stories  were  waxing  at  the  time 
rather  dim  and  uncertain  in  Sutherland.  The  county,  through 
the  influence  of  its  good  Earls  and  its  godly  Lords  Reay,  had 
been  early  converted  to  Protestantism  ;  and  its  people  had  in 
consequence  ceased  to  take  liberties  with  the  throats  and  cattle 
of  their  neighbors,  about  a  hundred  years  earlier  than  in 
any  other  part  of  the  Scotch  Highlands.  And  as  for  the  Fin- 
galian legends,  they  were,  I  found,  very  wild  legends  indeed. 
Some  of  them  immortalized  wonderful  hunters,  who  had  ex- 
cited the  love  of  Fingal's  lady,  and  whom  her  angry  and  jeal- 
ous husband  had  sent  out  to  hunt  monstrous  wild  boars  with 
poisonous  bristles  on  their  backs, — secure  in  this  way  of  get- 
ting rid  of  them.  And  some  of  them  embalmed  the  misdeeds 
of  spiritless  diminutive  Fions,  not  very  much  above  fifteen 
feet  in  height,  who,  unlike  their  more  active  companions,  could 
not  leap  across  the  Cromarty  or  Dornoch  Friths  on  their  spears, 
and  who,  as  was  natural,  were  despised  by  the  women  of  the 
tribe  very  much.  The  pieces  of  fine  sentiment  and  brilliant 
description  discovered  by  Macpherson  seemed  never  to  have 
found  their  way  into  this  northern  district.  But,  told  in  fluent 
Gaelic,  in  the  great  "  Ha',"  the  wild  legends  served  every  ne- 
cessary purpose  equally  well.  The  "  Ha'  "  in  the  autumn 
nights,  as  the  days  shortened  and  the  frosts  set  in,  was  a  genial 
place  ;  and  so  attached  was  my  cousin  to  its  distinctive  prin- 


OK,   THE  STORY  OF  MY  EDUCATION.  10 1 

ciple, — the  fire  in  the  midst, — as  handed  down  from  the  "  days 
of  other  years,"  that  in  the  plan  of  a  new  two-storied  house 
for  his  father,  which  he  had  procured  from  a  London  archi- 
tect, one  of  the  nethor  rooms  was  actually  designed  in  the  cir- 
cular form  ;  and  a  hearth  like  a  millstone,  placed  in  the  centre, 
represented  the  place  of  the  fire.  But  there  was,  as  I  re- 
marked to  Cousin  George,  no  corresponding  central  hole  in  the 
room  above,  through  which  to  let  up  the  smoke ;  and  I  ques 
tioned  whether  a  nicely-plastered  apartment,  round  as  a  band 
box,  with  a  fire  in  the  middle,  like  the  sun  in  the  centre  of 
an  Orrery,  would  have  been  quite  like  anything  ever  seen  in 
the  Highlands  before.  The  plan,  however,  was  not  destined 
to  encounter  criticism,  or  give  trouble  in  the  execution  of  it. 
On  Sabbaths  my  cousin  and  his  two  brothers  attended  the 
parish  church,  attired  in  the  full  Highland  dress ;  and  three 
handsome,  well-formed  men  they  were  ;  but  my  aunt,  though 
mayhap  not  quite  without  the  mother's  pride,  did  not  greatly 
relish  the  exhibition  ;  and  oftener  than  once  I  heard  her  say 
so  to  her  sister  my  mother ;  though  she,  smitten  by  the  gallant 
appearance  of  her  nephews,  seemed  inclined  rather  to  take  the 
opposite  side.  My  uncle,  on  the  other  hand,  said  nothing 
either  for  or  against  the  display.  He  had  been  a  keen  High- 
lander in  his  younger  days  ;  and  when  the  inhibition  against 
wearing  tartan  and  the  philabeg  had  been  virtually  removed, 
in  consideration  of  the  achievements  of  the  "  hardy  and  daunt- 
less men"  who,  according  to  Chatham,  conquered  for  England 
"  in  every  quarter  of  the  globe,"  he  had  celebrated  the  event 
in  a  merry-making,  at  which  the  dance  was  kept  up  from 
night  till  morning  ;  but  though  he  retained,  I  suspect,  his 
old  partialities,  he  was  now  a  sobered  man  ;  and  when  I  ven- 
tured to  ask  him,  on  one  occasion,  why  he  too  did  not  get  a 
Sunday  kilt,  which,  by  the  way,  he  would  "  have  set"  notwith- 
standing his  years,  as  well  as  any  of  his  sons,  he  merely  re- 
plied with  a  quiet  "  No,  no  ;  there's  no  fool  like  an  old  fool." 


102  MY  SCHOOLS  AND   SCHOOLMASTERS ; 


CHAPTER   VI 

"When  they  sawe  the  darksome  nicht, 
They  sat  them  downe  and  cryed." 

Babes  in  the  Wood. 

1  spent  the  holidays  of  two  other  autumns  in  this  delightful 
Highland  valley.  On  the  second,  as  on  the  first  occasion,  I 
had  accompanied  my  mother,  specially  invited  ;  but  the  third 
journey  was  an  unsanctioned  undertaking  of  my  own  and  a 
Cromarty  cousin,  my  contemporary,  to  whom,  as  he  had  never 
travelled  the  way,  I  had  to  act  as  protector  and  guide.  I 
reached  my  aunt's  cottage  without  mishap  or  adventure  of  any 
kind ;  but  found,  that  during  the  twelvemonth  that  had  just 
elapsed,  great  change  had  taken  place  in  the  circumstances  of 
the  household.  My  cousin  George  who  had  married  in  the 
interim,  had  gone  to  reside  in  a  cottage  of  his  own  ;  and  I  soon 
ascertained  that  my  cousin  William,  who  had  been  for  several 
months  resident  with  his  father,  had  not  nearly  so  many  visitors 
as  before  ;  nor  did  presents  of  salmon  and  haunches  of  veni- 
son come  at  all  so  often  the  way.  Immediately  after  the  final 
discomfiture  of  Napoleon,  an  extensive  course  of  speculation 
n  which  he  had  ventured  to  engage  had  turned  out  so  ill,  that, 
nstead  of  making  him  a  fortune,  as  at  first  seemed  probable, 
t  had  landed  him  in  the  Gazette  ;  and  he  was  now  tiding  over 
he  difficulties  of  a  time  of  settlement,  six  hundred  miles  from 
he  scene  of  disaster,  in  the  hope  of  being  soon  enabled  to  be- 


OR,   THE    STORY   OF  MY  EDUCATION.  103 

gin  the  world  anew.  He  bore  his  losses  with  quiet  magna- 
nimity ;  and  I  learned  to  know  and  like  him  better  during  his 
period  of  eclipse  than  in  the  previous  time,  when  summer 
friends  had  fluttered  around  him  by  scores.  He  was  a  gener- 
ous, warm-hearted  man,  who  felt,  with  the  force  of  an  im- 
planted instinct  not  vouchsafed  to  all,  that  it  is  more  blessed 
to  give  than  to  receive  ;  and  it  was  doubtless  a  wise  provision 
of  nature,  and  worthy,  in  this  point  of  view,  the  special  atten- 
'  tion  of  moralists  and  philosophers,  that  his  old  associates,  the 
*rand  gentlemen,  did  not  now  often  come  his  way  ;  seeing  that 
his  inability  any  longer  to  give  would  have  cost  him,  in  the 
circumstances,  great  pain. 

I  was  much  with  my  cousin  George  in  his  new  dwelling. 
It  was  one  of  the  most  delightful  of  Highland  cottages,  and 
George  was  happy  in  it,  far  above  the  average  lot  of  humanity, 
with  his  young  wife.  He  had  dared,  in  opposition  to  the  gen- 
eral voice  of  the  district,  to  build  it  half-way  up  the  slope  of 
a  beautiful  Tomhan,  that,  waving  with  birch  from  base  to 
summit,  rose  regular  as  a  pyramid  from  the  bottom  of  the  val- 
ley, and  commanded  a  wide  view  of  Loch  Shin  on  the  one 
hand,  with  the  moors  and  mountains  that  lie  beyond ;  and 
overlooked,  on  the  other,  with  all  the  richer  portions  of  the 
Barony  of  Gruids,  the  church  and  picturesque  hamlet  of 
Lairg.  Half-hidden  by  the  graceful  birchen  trees  that  sprang 
up  thick  around,  with  their  silvery  boles  and  light  foliage,  it 
was  rather  a  nest  than  a  house ;  and  George,  emancipated,  by 
his  reading,  and  his  residence  for  a  time  in  the  south,  from 
at  least  the  wilder  beliefs  of  the  locality,  failed  to  suffer,  as 
had  been  predicted,  for  his  temerity  ;  as  the  "  good  people," 
who,  much  to  their  credit,  had  made  choice  of  the  place  for 
themselves  long  before,  never,  to  his  knowledge,  paid  him  a 
visit.  He  had  brought  his  share  of  the  family  library  with 
nim  ;  and  it  was  a  large  share.  He  had  mathematical  instru 
ments,  too,  and  a  color-box,  and  the  tools  of  his  profession; 
in  especial,  large  hammers  fitted  to  break  great  stones  ;  and  1 
was  generously  made  free  of  them  all, — bcoks,  instruments, 
color-box,  and  hammers.     His  cottage,  too,  commanded,  from 


104 

its  situation,  a  delightful  variety  of  most  interesting  objects.  It 
had  all  the  advantages  of  my  uncle's  domicile,  and  a  great  many 
more. 

The  nearer  shores  of  Loch  Shin  were  scarce  half  a  mile 
away ;  and  there  was  a  low  long  promontory  which  shot  out 
into  the  lake,  that  was  covered  at  that  time  by  an  ancient  wood 
of  doddered  time-worn  trees,  and  bore  amid  its  outer  solitudes, 
where  the  waters  circled  round  its  terminal  apex,  one  of  those 
towers  of  hoary  eld,  memorials,  mayhap,  of  the  primeval  stone- 
period  in  our  island,  to  which  the  circular  erections  of  Glenelg 
and  Dornadilla  belong.  It  was  formed  of  undressed  stones  of 
vast  size,  uncemented  by  mortar  ;  and  through  the  thick  walls 
ran  winding  passages, — the  only  covered  portions  of  the  build- 
ing, for  the  inner  area  had  never  been  furnished  with  a  roof, — 
in  which,  when  a  sudden  shower  descended,  the  loiterer  amid 
the  ruins  could  find  shelter.  It  was  a  fascinating  place  to  a 
curious  boy.  Some  of  the  old  trees  had  become  mere  whitened 
skeletons,  that  stretched  forth  their  blasted  arms  to  the  sky, 
and  had  so  slight  a  hold  of  the  soil,  that  I  have  overthrown 
them  with  a  delightful  crash,  by  merely  running  against  them  ; 
the  heath  rose  thick  beneath,  and  it  was  a  source  of  fearful  joy 
to  know  that  it  harbored  snakes  full  three  feet  long;  and 
though  the  loch  itself  is  by  no  means  one  of  our  finer  High- 
land lochs,  it  furnished,  to  at  least  my  eye  at  this  time,  a  de- 
lightful prospect  in  still  October  mornings,  when  the  light  gos- 
samer went  sailing  about  in  white  filmy  threads,  and  birch  and 
hazel,  glorified  by  decay,  served  to  embroider  with  gold  the 
brown  hill-sides  which,  standing  up  on  either  hand  in  their 
long  vista  of  more  than  twenty  miles,  form  the  barriers  of  the 
lake ;  and  when  the  sun,  still  struggling  with  a  blue  diluted  haze, 
ell  delicately  on  the  smooth  surface,  or  twinkled  for  a  moment 
>n  the  silvery  coats  of  the  little  trout,  as  they  sprang  a  few 
inches  into  the  air,  and  then  broke  the  water  into  a  series  of 
concentric  rings  in  their  descent.  When  I  last  passed  the 
way,  both  the  old  wood  and  the  old  tower  were  gone  ;  and  for 
the  latter,  which,  though  much  a  ruin,  might  have  survived 
for  ages,  I  found  only  a  lor.g  extent  of  dry-stone  dike,  and 


105 

the  wide  ring  formed  by  the  old  foundation-stones,  which  had 
proved  too  massive  to  be  removed.  A  greatly  more  entire 
erection  of  the  same  age  and  style,  known  of  old  as  Dunalis- 
cag,— which  stood  on  the  Ross-shire  side  of  the  Dornoch 
Frith,  and  within  whose  walls,  forming,  as  it  did,  a  sort  of 
half-way  stage,  I  used,  on  these  Sutherlandshire  journeys,  to 
eat  my  piece  of  cake  with  a  double  relish, — I  found,  on  last 
passing  the  way,  similarly  represented.  Its  gray  venerable 
walls,  and  dark  winding  passages  of  many  steps, — even  the 
huge  pear-shaped  linte7,  which  had  stretched  over  its  little 
door,  and  which,  according  to  tradition,  a  great  Fingalian  lady 
had  once  thrown  across  the  Dornoch  Frith  from  off  the  point 
of  her  spindle, — had  all  disappeared,  and  I  saw  instead,  only  a 
dry-stone  wall.  The  men  of  the  present  generation  do  certain- 
ly live  in  a  most  enlightened  age, — an  age  in  which  every  trace 
of  the  barbarism  of  our  early  ancestors  is  fast  disappearing ; 
and  were  we  but  more  zealous  in  immortalizing  the  public 
benefactors  who  efface  such  dark  memorials  of  the  past  as 
the  tower  of  Dunaliscag  and  the  promontory  of  Loch  Shin,  it 
would  be,  doubtless,  an  encouragement  to  others  to  speed  us 
yet  further  on  in  the  march  of  improvement.  It  seems  scarce 
fair  that  the  enlightened  destroyers  of  Arthur's  Oven,  or  of  the 
bas-relief  known  as  Robin  of  Redesdale,  or  of  the  Town-cross 
of  Edinburgh,  should  enjoy  all  the  celebrity  attendant  on  such 
acts,  while  the  equally  deserving  iconoclasts  of  Dunaliscag 
and  the  tower  of  Loch  Shin  should  be  suffered  to  die  without 
their  fame. 

I  remember  spending  one  singularly  delightful  morning  with 
Cousin  George  beside  the  ancient  tower.  He  pointed  out  to 
me,  amid  the  heath,  several  plants  to  which  the  old  High 
landers  used  to  attach  occult  virtues, — plants  that  disenchant- 
ed bewitched  cattle,  not  by  their  administration  as  medicines 
to  the  sick  animals,  but  by  bringing  them  in  contact,  as  charms, 
with  the  injured  milk ;  and  plants  which  were  used  as  phil- 
ters either  for  procuring  love  or  exciting  hatred.  It  was,  ho 
showed  me,  the  root  of  a  species  of  orchis  that  was  employed 
in  making  the  philters.     While  most  of  the  radical  litres  of 


106  MY  SCHOOLS  AND  SCHOOLMASTEES  ; 

the  plant  retain  the  ordinary  cylindrical  form,  two  of  their 
number  are  usually  found  developed  into  starchy  tubercles ; 
but,  belonging  apparently  to  different  seasons,  one  of  the  two 
is  of  a  dark  color,  and  of  such  gravity  that  it  sinks  in  water ; 
while  the  other  is  light-colored,  and  floats.  And  a  powder 
made  of  the  light-colored  tubercle  formed  the  main  ingre- 
dient, said  my  cousin,  in  the  love  philter ;  while  a  powder 
made  of  the  dark-colored  one  excited,  it  was  held,  only  an- 
tipathy and  dislike.  And  then  George  would  speculate  on 
the  origin  of  a  belief  which  could,  as  h^  said,  neither  be  sug 
gested  by  reason  nor  tested  by  experience.  Living,  however, 
among  a  people  with  whom  beliefs  of  this  kind  were  still  vital 
and  influential,  he  did  not  wholly  escape  their  influence ;  and 
I  saw  him  in  one  instance  administer  to  an  ailing  cow  a  little 
live  trout,  simply  because  the  traditions  of  the  district  assured 
him  that  a  trout  swallowed  alive  by  the  creature  was  the  only 
specific  in  the  case.  Some  of  his  Highland  stories  were  very 
curious.  He  communicated  to  me,  for  example,  beside  the 
broken  tower,  a  tradition  illustrative  of  the  Celtic  theory  of 
dreaming,  of  which  I  have  since  often  thought.  Two  young 
men  had  been  spending  the  early  portion  of  a  warm  summer 
day  in  exactly  such  a  scene  as  that  in  which  he  communicated 
the  anecdote.  There  was  an  ancient  ruin  beside  them,  sepa- 
rated, however,  from  the  mossy  bank  on  which  they  sat,  by  a 
slender  runnel,  across  which  there  lay,  immediately  over  a 
miniature  cascade,  a  few  withered  grass  stalks.  Overcome 
by  the  heat  of  the  day,  one  of  the  young  men  fell  asleep ;  his 
companion  watched  drowsily  beside  him ;  when  all  at  once  the 
watcher  was  aroused  to  attention  by  seeing  a  little  indistinct 
form,  scarce  larger  than  a  humble-bee,  issue  from  the  mouth  of 
the  sleeping  man,  and,  leaping  upon  the  moss,  move  down 
wards  to  the  runnel,  which  it  crossed  along  the  withered  gras; 
stalks,  and  then  disappeared  amid  the  interstices  of  the  ruin. 
Alarmed  b)  what  he  saw,  the  watcher  hastily  shook  his  com- 
panion by  the  shoulder,  and  awoke  him ;  though,  with  all  his 
haste,  the  little  cloud-like  creature,  still  more  rapid  in  its  move- 
ments, issued  from  the  interstice  into  which  it  had  gone,  and, 


OR,    THE  STORY   OF   MY   EDUCATION.  107 

flying  across  the  runnel,  instead  of  creeping  along  the  grass 
stalks  and  over  the  sward,  as  before,  it  re-entered  the  mouth 
of  the  sleeper,  just  as  he  was  in  the  act  of  awakening.  "  What 
is  the  matter  with  you  ?"  said  the  watcher,  greatly  alarmed. 
"  What  ails  you  ?"  "  Nothing  ails  me,"  replied  the  other ; 
"  but  you  have  robbed  me  of  a  most  delightful  dream.  I 
dreamed  I  was  walking  through  a  fine,  rich  country,  and  came 
at  length  to  the  shores  of  a  noble  river ;  and,  just  where  th 
cl'  ar  water  went  thundering  down  a  precipice,  there  was 
bridge  all  of  silver,  which  I  crossed  ;  and  then,  entering  a 
noble  palace  on  the  opposite  side,  I  saw  great  heaps  of  gold 
and  jewels;  and  I  was  just  going  to  load  myself  with  treas- 
ure, when  you  rudely  awoke  me,  and  I  lost  all."  I  know  not 
what  the  asserters  of  the  clairvoyant  faculty  may  think  of  the 
story ;  but  I  rather  believe  I  have  occasionally  seen  them 
make  use  of  anecdotes  that  did  not  rest  on  evidence  a  great 
deal  more  solid  than  the  Highland  legend,  and  that  illustrated 
not  much  more  clearly  the  philosophy  of  the  phenomena  with 
which  they  profess  to  deal. 

Of  all  my  cousins,  Cousin  George  was  the  one  whose  pur- 
suits most  nearly  resembled  my  own,  and  in  whose  society  I 
most  delighted  to  share.  He  did  sometimes  borrow  a  day 
from  his  work,  even  after  his  marriage ;  but  then,  according 
to  the  poet,  it  was 

"The  love  he  bore  to  science  waa  iu  fault." 

The  borrowed  day  was  always  spent  in  transferring  to  paper 
some  architectural  design,  or  in  working  out  some  mathemat- 
ical problem,  or  in  rendering  some  piece  of  Gaelic  verse  into 
English,  or  some  piece  of  English  prose  into  Gaelic ;  and  as 
he  was  a  steady,  careful  man,  the  appropriated  day  was  never 
seriously  missed.  The  winter,  too,  was  all  his  own,  for  in 
those  northern  districts,  masons  are  never  employed  from  a 
little  after  Hallow-day,  till  the  second,  or  even  third  month  of 
spring, — a  circumstance  which  I  carefully  noted  at  this  time 
in  its  bearing  on  the  amusements  of  my  cousin,  and  which 
afterwards  weighed  not  a  little  with  me  when  I  came  to  make 


103  MY  SCHOOLS   AND  SCHOOLMASTERS; 

choice  of  a  profession  for  myself.  And  George's  winters  were 
always  ingeniously  spent.  He  had  a  great  command  of  Gaelic, 
and  a  very  tolerable  command  of  English;  and  so  a  transla- 
tion of  Bunyan's  "  Visions  of  Heaven  and  Hell,"  which  he 
published  several  years  subsequent  to  this  period,  was  not 
only  well  received  by  his  country  folk  of  Sutherland  and  Ross, 
but.  was  said  by  competent  judges  to  be  really  a  not  inadequate 
rendering  of  the  meaning  and  spirit  of  the  noble  old  tinker 
of  Elstow.  I  of  course  could  be  no  authority  respecting  the 
merits  of  a  translation,  the  language  of  which  I  did  not  under- 
stand ;  but  living  much  amid  the  literature  of  a  time  when 
almost  every  volume,  whether  the  Virgil  of  a  Dryden  or  the 
Meditations  of  a  Hervey,  was  heralded  by  its  sets  of  compli- 
mentary verses,  and  having  a  deep  interest  in  whatever  Cousin. 
George  undertook  and  performed,  I  addressed  to  him  in  the 
old  style,  a  few  introductory  stanzas,  which,  to  indulge  me  in 
the  inexpressible  luxury  of  seeing  myself  in  print  fur  the  first 
time,  he  benevolently  threw  into  type.  They  survive  to  re- 
mind me  that  my  cousin's  belief  in  Ossian  did  exert  some  little 
influence  over  my  phraseology  when  I  addressed  myself  to 
him,  and  that,  with  the  rashness  natural  to  immature  youth, 
\  had  at  this  time  the  temerity  to  term  myself  "  poet.' 

Yes,  oft  I've  said,  as  oft  I've  seen 

The  men  who  dwell  its  hills  among, 
That  Morven's  land  has  ever  been 

A  land  of  valor,  worth,  and  song. 

But  Ignorance,  of  darkness  dire, 

Has  o'er  that  land  a  mantle  spread  ; 
And  all  untun'd  and  rude  the  lyre 

That  sounds  beneath  its  gloomy  shade. 

With  muse  of  calm,  untiring  wing, 

O,  be  it  thine,  my  friend,  to  show 
The  Celtic  swain  how  Saxons  sing 

Of  Hell's  dire  gloom  and  Heaven's  glow! 

So  shall  the  meed  of  fame  be  thine, 
The  glistening  bay-wreath  green  and  gay ; 

Thy  poet,  too,  though  weak  his  line, 
Shall  frame  for  thee  th'  approving  lay. 


0R;    THE    STORY   OF   MY   EDUCATION.  109 

Longing  for  some  profession  in  which  his  proper  work  would 
give  exercise  to  the  faculties  which  he  most  delighted  to  cul- 
tivate, my  cousin  resolved  on  becoming  candidate  for  a  Gaelic 
Society  school, — a  poor  enough  sort  of  office  then,  as  now  ; 
but  which,  by  investing  a  little  money  in  cattle,  by  tilling  a 
little  croft,  and  by  now  and  then  emitting  from  the  press  a 
Gaelic  translation,  might,  he  thought,  be  rendered  sufficiently 
reinunerative  to  supply  the  very  moderate  wants  of  himself 
and  his  little  family.  And  so  he  set  out  for  Edinburgh,  amply 
furnished  with  testimonials  that  meant  more  in  his  case  than 
testimonials  usually  mean,  to  stand  an  examination  before  a 
Committee  of  the  Gaelic  School  Society.  Unluckily  for  his 
success,  however,  instead  of  bringing  with  him  his  ordinary 
Sabbath-day  suit  of  dark  brown  and  blue,  (the  kilt  had  been 
assumed  for  but  a  few  weeks,  to  please  his  brother  William,) 
he  had  provided  himself  with  a  suit  of  tartan,  as  at  once  cheap 
and  respectable,  and  appeared  before  the  Committee, — if  not 
in  the  garb,  in  at  least  the  many-colored  hues  of  his  clan, — a 
robust,  manly  Highlander,  apparently  as  well  suited  to  enact 
the  part  of  color-serjeant  to  the  Forty-Second,  as  to  teach 
children  their  letters.  A  grave  member  of  the  Society,  at 
that  time  high  in  repute  for  sanctity  of  character,  but  who 
afterwards  becoming  righteous  overmuch,  wras  loosened  from 
nis  charge,  and  straightway,  spurning  the  ground,  rose  into  an 
Irvingite  angel,  came  at  once  to  the  conclusion  that  no  such 
type  of  man,  encased  in  clan-tartan,  could  possibly  have  the 
root  of  the  matter  in  him ;  and  so  he  determined  that  Cousin 
George  should  be  cast  in  the  examination.  But  then,  as  it 
could  not  be  alleged  with  any  decency  that  my  cousin  was 
inadmissible  on  the  score  of  his  having  too  much  tartan,  it  was 
agreed  that  he  should  be  declared  inadmissible  on  the  score 
of  his  having  too  little  Gaelic.  And,  of  course,  at  this  resul4- 
the  examinators  arrived  ;  and  George,  ultimately  to  his  ad  van 
tage,  was  cast  accordingly.  I  still  remember  the  astonish 
ment  evinced  by  a  worthy  catechist  of  the  north, — himself  a 
Gaelic  teacher, — on  being  told  how  my  cousin  had  fared. 
"  George  Munro  not  allowed  to  pass,"  he  said,  "  for  want  of 


110  MY 

right  Gaelic  !  Why,  he  has  more  right  Gaelic  to  his  own  self 
than  all  the  Society's  teachers  in  this  corner  of  Scotland  put 
together.  They  are  the  cvriousest  people,  some  of  these  good 
gentlemen  of  the  Edinburgh  Committees,  that  I  ever  heard  of, 
they're  just  like  our  country  lawyers."  It  would,  however, 
be  far  from  fair  to  regard  this  transaction,  which  took  place,  I 
may  mention,  so  late  as  the  year  1829,  as  a  specimen  of  the 
actings  of  either  civic  societies  or  country  lawyers.  George's 
chief  examinator  on  the  occasion  was  the  minister  of  the 
Gaelic  chapel  of  the  place,  at  that  time  one  of  the  Society's 
Committee  for  the  year ;  and,  not  being  a  remarkably  scru- 
pulous man,  he  seems  to  have  stretched  a  point  or  two,  in  com- 
pliance with  the  pious  wishes  and  occult  judgment  of  the 
Society's  Secretary.  But  the  anecdote  is  not  without  its  lesson. 
When  devout  W alter  Taits  set  themselves  ingeniously  to  ma- 
noeuvre with  the  purest  of  intentions,  and  for  what  they  deem 
the  best  of  purposes, — when,  founding  their  real  grounds  of 
objection  on  one  set  of  appearances,  they  found  their  ostensi- 
ble grounds  of  objection  on  another  and  entirely  different  set 
— they  are  always  exposed  to  the  signal  danger  of — getting 
indevout  Duncan  M'Caigs  to  assist  them.  Only  two  years 
from  the  period  of  my  cousin's  examination  before  the  Soci- 
ety, his  reverend  examinator  received  at  the  bar  of  the  High 
Court  of  Justiciary,  in  the  character  of  a  thief  convicted  of 
eleven  several  acts  of  stealing,  sentence  of  transportation  for 
fourteen  years. 

I  had  several  interesting  excursions  with  my  cousin  William. 
We  found  ourselves  one  evening — on  our  way  home  from 
a  mineral  spring  which  he  had  discovered  among  the  hills — 
in  a  little  lonely  valley,  which  opened  transversely  into  that 
of  the  Gruids,  and  which,  though  its  sides  were  mottled  with 
green  furrow-marked  patches,  had  not  at  the  time  its  single 
human  habitation.  At  the  upper  end,  however,  there  stood 
the  ruins  of  a  narrow  two-storied  house,  with  one  of  its 
gables  still  entire  frcm  foundation-stone  to  the  shattered 
chimney-tops,  but  with  the  other  gable,  and  the  larger  part 
of  the  front  wall,  laid  prostrate  along  the  sward.     My  cousin, 


OR,  THE   STORY   OF   MY   EDUCATION.  Ill 

after  bidding  me  remark  the  completeness  of  the  solitude,  and 
that  the  eye  could  not  command  from  the  site  of  the  ruin  a 
single  spot  where  man  had  ever  dwelt,  told  me  that  it  had 
been  the  scene  of  the  strict  seclusion,  amounting  almost  to 
imprisonment,  about  eighty  years  before,  of  a  lady  of  high 
birth,  over  whom,  in  early  youth,  there  had  settled  a  sad  cloud 
of  infamy.  She  had  borne  a  child  to  one  of  the  menials  of  her 
father's  house,  which,  with  the  assistance  of  her  paramour,  she 
had  murdered ;  and  being  too  high  for  the  law  to  reach  ii 
these  northern  parts,  at  a  time  when  the  hereditary  jurisdic- 
tion still  existed  entire,  and  her  father  was  the  sole  magistrate, 
possessed  of  the  power  of  life  and  death  in  the  district,  she 
was  sent  by  her  family  to  wear  out  life  in  this  lonely  retreat, 
in  which  she  remained  secluded  from  the  world  for  more  than 
half  a  century.  And  then,  long  after  the  abolition  of  the  local 
jurisdictions,  and  when  her  father  and  brother,  with  the  entire 
generation  that  knew  of  her  crime,  had  passed  away,  she  was 
permitted  to  take  up  her  abode  in  one  of  the  sea-port  towns 
of  the  north,  where  she  was  still  remembered  at  this  time  as  a 
crazy  old  lady,  invariably  silent  and  sullen,  that  used  to  be 
seen  in  the  twilight  flitting  about  the  more  retired  lanes  and 
closes,  like  an  unhappy  ghost.  The  story,  as  told  me  in  that 
solitary  valley,  just  as  the  sun  was  sinking  over  the  hill  be- 
yond, powerfully  impressed  my  fancy.  Crabbe  would  have 
delighted  to  tell  it ;  and  I  now  relate  it,  as  it  lies  fast  wedged 
in  my  memory,  mainly  for  the  peculiar  light  which  it  casts  on 
the  times  of  the  hereditary  jurisdictions.  It  forms  an  example 
of  one  of  the  judicial  banishments  of  an  age  that  used,  in 
ordinary  cases,  to  save  itself  all  sorts  of  trouble  of  the  kind, 
by  hanging  its  victims.  I  may  add,  that  I  saw  a  good  deal  of 
the  neighborhood  at  this  time  in  the  company  of  my  cousin, 
and  gleaned,  from  my  visits  to  shieling  and  cottage,  most  of 
my  conceptions  of  the  state  of  the  Northern  Highlands,  ere  the 
clearance  system  had  depopulated  the  interior  of  the  country, 
and  precipitated  its  poverty-stricken  population  upon  the  coasts. 
There  was,  however,  one  of  my  excursions  with  Cousin 
W ill  iam.  that  turned  out  rather  unfortunately.    The  river  Shin 


112  MY  SCHOOLS  AND  SCHOOLMASTERS; 

has  its  bold  salmon-leap,  which  even  yet,  after  several  hun- 
dred pounds  worth  of  gunpowder  have  been  expended  in  slop- 
ing its  angle  of  ascent,  to  facilitate  the  passage  of  the  fish,  is 
a  fine  picturesque  object,  but  which  at  this  time,  when  it  pre- 
sented all  its  original  abruptness,  was  a  finer  object  still. 
Though  distant  about  three  miles  from  my  uncle's  cottage,  we 
could  distinctly  hear  its  roarings  from  beside  his  door,  when 
October  nights  were  frosty  and  still ;  and  as  we  had  been  told 
many  strange  stories  regarding  it, — stories  about  bold  fishers 
who  had  threaded  their  dangerous  way  between  the  over- 
hanging rock  and  the  water,  and  who,  striking  outwards,  had 
speared  salmon  through  the  foam  of  the  cataract  as  they 
leaped, — stories,  too,  of  skilful  sportsmen,  who,  taking  their 
stand  in  the  thick  wood  beyond,  had  shot  the  rising  animals,  as 
one  shoots  a  bird  flying, — both  my  Cromarty  cousin  and  my- 
self were  extremely  desirous  to  visit  the  scene  of  such  feats  and 
marvels ;  and  Cousin  William  obligingly  agreed  to'  act  as 
our  guide  and  instructor  by  the  way.  He  did  look  some- 
what askance  at  our  naked  feet ;  and  we  heard  him  remark, 
in  an  under  tone,  to  his  mother,  that  when  he  and  his  brothers 
were  boys,  she  never  suffered  them  to  visit  her  Cromarty  rela- 
tions unshod  ;  but  neither  Cousin  Walter  nor  myself  had  the 
magnanimity  to  say,  that  our  mothers  had  also  taken  care  to 
see  us  shod ;  but  that,  deeming  it  lighter  and  cooler  to  walk 
barefoot,  the  good  women  had  no  sooner  turned  their  backs 
than  we  both  agreed  to  fling  our  shoes  into  a  corner,  and  set 
out  on  our  journey  without  them.  The  walk  to  the  salmon- 
leap  was  a  thoroughly  delightful  one.  We  passed  through 
the  woo^  <j!  Achanie,  famous  for  their  nuts  ;  startled,  as  we 
went,  a  herd  of  roe-deer ;  and  found  the  leap  itself  far  exceed- 
ing all  anticipation.  The  Shin  becomes  savagely  wild  in 
its  lower  reaches.  Rugged  precipices  of  gneiss,  with  scattered 
bushes  fast  anchored  in  the  crevices,  overhang  the  stream, 
which  boils  in  many  a  dark  pool,  and  foams  over  many  a  steep 
rapid ;  and  immediately  beneath,  where  it  threw  itself  head- 
long, at  this  time,  over  the  leap, — for  it  now  merely  rushes  in 
snow  adown  a  steep  slope, — there  was  a  cauldron,  so  awfully 


113 

dark  and  profound,  that,  according  to  the  accounts  of  the  dis 
trict,  it  had  no  bottom  ;  and  so  vexed  was  it  by  a  frightful 
whirlpool,  that  no  one  ever  fairly  caught  in  its  eddies  had  suc- 
ceeded, it  was  said,  in  regaining  the  shore.  We  saw,  as  we 
stood  amidst  the  scraggy  trees  of  an  overhanging  wood,  the  sal- 
mon leaping  up  by  scores,  most  of  them,  however,  to  fall  back 
again  into  the  pool, — for  only  a  very  few  stray  fish  that  at- 
tempted the  cataract  at  its  edges  seemed  to  succeed  in  forcing 
their  upward  way ;  we  saw,  too,  on  a  shelf  of  the  precipitous 
but  wooded  bank,  the  rude  hut,  formed  of  undressed  logs, 
where  a  solitary  watcher  used  to  take  his  stand,  to  protect 
them  from  the  spear  and  fowling-piece  of  the  poacher,  and 
which,  in  stormy  nights,  when  the  cry  of  the  kelpie  mingled 
with  the  roar  of  the  flood,  must  have  been  a  sublime  lodge  in 
the  wilderness,  in  which  a  poet  might  have  delighted  to  dwell. 
I  was  excited  by  the  scene ;  and,  when  heedlessly  leaping  from 
a  tall  lichened  stone  into  the  long  heath  below,  my  right  foot 
came  so  heavily  in  contact  with  a  sharp-edged  fragment  of  rock 
concealed  in  the  moss,  that  I  almost  screamed  aloud  with  pain. 
I,  however,  suppressed  the  shriek,  and,  sitting  down  and  set- 
ting my  teeth  close,  bore  the  pang,  until  it  gradually  moder 
ated,  and  my  foot,  to  the  ankle,  seemed  as  if  almost  divested 
of  feeling.  In  our  return,  I  halted  as  I  walked,  and  lagged 
considerably  behind  my  companions  ;  and  during  the  whole 
evening  the  injured  foot  seemed  as  if  dead,  save  that  it  glowed 
with  an  intense  heat.  I  was,  however,  at  ease  enough  to  write 
a  sublime  piece  of  blank  verse  on  the  cataract;  and,  proud 
of  my  production,  I  attempted  reading  it  to  Cousin  William. 
But  William  had  taken  lessons  in  recitation  under  the  great 
Mr.  Thelwall,  politician  and  elocutionist ;  and  deeming  it  prop- 
er to  set  me  right  in  all  the  words  which  I  mispronounced, — 
three  out  of  every  four  at  least,  and  not  unfrequcntly  the  fourth 
word  also, — the  reading  of  the  piece  proved  greatly  stiffer  and 
slower  work  than  the  writing  of  it ;  and,  somewhat  to  my  mor- 
tification, my  cousin  declined  giving  me  any  definite  judgment 
on  its  merits,  even  when  I  had  done.  He  insisted,  however, 
on  the  siomfu1   advantages  of  reading  well.     He  had  an  ac- 


114  MY  SCHOOLS  AND  SCHOOLMASTERS; 

quaintance,  he  said,  a  poet,  who  had  taken  lessons  under  Mr. 
Thelwall,  and  who,  though  his  verses,  when  he  published,  met 
with  no  great  success,  was  so  indebted  to  his  admirable  elocu- 
tion, as  to  be  invariably  successful  when  he  read  them  to  his 
friends. 

Next  morning  my  injured  foot  was  stiff  and  sore  ;  and,  after 
a  few  days  of  suffering,  it  suppurated  and  discharged  great 
quantities  of  blood  and  matter.  It  was,  however,  fast  getting 
well  again,  when,  tired  of  inaction,  and  stirred  up  by  my  cousin 
Walter,  who  wearied  sadly  of  the  Highlands,  I  set  out  with 
him,  contrary  to  all  advice,  on  my  homeward  journey,  and, 
for  the  first  six  or  eight  miles,  got  on  tolerably  well.  My 
cousin,  a  stout,  active  lad,  carried  the  bag  of  Highland  luxu- 
ries— cheese,  and  butter,  and  a  full  peck  of  nuts — with  which 
we  had  been  laden  by  my  aunt ;  and,  by  way  ofSndemnity  for 
taking  both  my  share  of  the  burden  and  his  own,  he  demand 
ed  of  me  some  of  my  long  extempore  stories,  which,  shortly 
after  leaving  my  aunt's  cottage,  I  accordingly  began.  My 
stories,  when  I  had  Cousin  Walter  for  my  companion,  were 
usually  co-extensive  with  the  journey  to  be  performed  :  they 
became  ten,  fifteen,  or  twenty  miles  long,  agreeably  to  the 
measure  of  the  road,  and  the  determination  of  the  mile-stones ; 
and  what  was  at  present  required  was  a  story  of  about  thirty 
miles  in  length,  whose  one  end  would  touch  the  Barony  of 
Gruids,  and  the  other  the  Cromarty  Ferry.  At  the  end,  how- 
ever, of  the  first  six  or  eight  miles,  my  story  broke  suddenly 
down,  and  my  foot,  after  becoming  very  painful,  began  to 
bleed.  The  day,  too,  had  grown  raw  and  unpleasant,  and 
after  twelve  o'clock  there  came  on  a  thick  wetting  drizzle.  1 
limped  on  silently  in  the  rear,  leaving  at  every  few  paces  a 
blotch  of  blood  upon  the  road,  until,  in  the  parish  of  Edderton, 
we  both  remembered  that  there  was  a  short  cut  through  the 
hills,  which  two  of  our  older  cousins  had  taken  during  the 
previous  year,  when  on  a  similar  journey  ;  and  as  Walter 
deemed  himself  equal  to  anything  which  his  elder  cousins 
could  perform,  and  as  I  was  exceedingly  desirous  to  get  home 
as  soon  as  possible,  and  by  the  shortest  way,  we  both  struck 


OR,    THE   STOKY   OF   MY   EDUCATION.  115 

up  the  hill-side,  and  soon  found  ourselves  in  a  dreary  waste, 
without  trace  of  human  habitation. 

Walter,  however,  pushed  on  bravely  and  in  the  right  direc- 
tion ;  and,  though  my  head  was  now  becoming  light,  and  my 
sight  dim,  I  succeeded  in  struggling  after  him,  until,  just  as 
the  night  was  falling,  we  reached  a  heathy  ridge  which  com- 
mands the  northern  sea-board  of  the  Cromarty  Frith,  and  saw 
the  cultivated  country  and  the  sands  of  Nigg  lying  only  a  few 
miles  below.  The  sands  are  dangerous  at  certain  hours  of 
the  tide,  and  accidents  frequently  happen  in  the  fords ;  but 
then  there  could,  we  thought,  be  no  fear  of  us ;  for  though 
Walter  could  not  swim,  I  could  ;  and  as  I  was  to  lead  the 
way,  he  of  course  would  be  safe,  by  simply  avoiding  the  places 
where  I  lost  footing.  The  night  fell  rather  thick  than  dark, 
for  there  was  a  moon  overhead,  though  it  could  not  be  seen 
through  the  cloud  ;  but  though  WTalter  steered  well,  the  down- 
ward way  wras  exceedingly  rough  and  broken,  and  we  had 
wandered  from  the  path.  I  retain  a  faint  but  painful  recollec- 
tion of  a  scraggy  moor,  and  of  dark  patches  of  planting, 
through  which  I  had  to  grope  onwards,  stumbling  as  I  went ; 
and  then  that  I  began  to  feel  as  if  I  were  merely  dreaming, 
and  that  the  dream  was  a  very  horrible  one,  from  which  I  could 
not  awaken.  And  finally,  on  reaching  a  little  cleared  spot  on 
the  edge  of  the  cultivated  country,  I  dropped  down  as  sudden- 
ly as  if  struck  by  a  bullet,  and,  after  an  ineffectual  attempt  to 
rise,  fell  fast  asleep.  Walter  was  much  frightened  ;  but  he 
succeeded  in  carrying  me  to  a  little  rick  of  dried  grass  which 
stood  up  in  the  middle  of  the  clearing ;  and  after  covering 
me  well  up  with  the  grass,  he  laid  himself  down  beside  me. 
Anxiety,  however,  kept  him  awake;  and  he  was  frightened, 
as  he  lay,  to  hear  the  sounds  of  psalm-singing,  in  the  old  Gae- 
lic style  coming  apparently  from  a  neighboring  clump  of 
wood.  Walter  believed  in  the  fairies;  and,  though  psalmody 
was  not  one  of  the  reputed  accomplishments  of  the  "good 
people"  in  the  low  country,  he  did  not  know  but  that  in  the 
Highlands  the  case  might  be  different.  Some  considerable 
time  after  the  singing  had  ceased,  there  was  a  slow,  heavy  step 


116 

heard  approaching  the  rick ;  an  exclamation  in  Gaelic  follow- 
ed ;  and  then  a  ro  lgh,  hard  hand  grasped  Walter  by  the  nak- 
ed heel.  He  started  up,  and  found  himself  confronted  by  an 
old,  gray-headed  man,  the  inmate  of  a  cottage  which,  hidden 
in  the  neighboring  clump,  had  escaped  his  notice. 

The  old  man,  in  the  belief  that  we  were  gipsies,  was  at  first 
disposed  to  be  angry  at  the  liberty  we  had  taken  with  his  hay- 
rick ;  but  Walter's  simple  story  mollified  him  at  once,  and  he 
expressed  deep  regret  that  "  poor  boys,  who  had  met  with  an  ac- 
cident," should  have  laid  them  down  in  such  a  night,  under  the 
open  sky,  and  a  house  so  near.  "  It  was  putting  disgrace,"  he 
said,  "  on  a  Christian  land."  I  was  assisted  into  his  cottage, 
whose  only  other  inmate,  an  aged  woman,  the  old  Highlander's 
wife,  received  us  with  great  kindness  and  sympathy  ;  and  on 
Walter's  declaring  our  names  and  lineage,  the  hospitable  re- 
grets and  regards  of  both  host  and  hostess  waxed  stronger  and 
louder  still.  They  knew  our  maternal  grandfather  and  grand- 
mother, and  remembered  old  Donald  Roy  ;  and  when  my 
cousin  named  my  father,  there  was  a  strongly  expressed  burst 
of  sorrow  and  commiseration,  that  the  son  of  a  man  whom  they 
had  seen  so  "  well  to  do  in  the  world"  should  be  in  circum- 
stances so  deplorably  destitute.  I  was  too  ill  to  take  much 
note  of  what  passed.  I  only  remember,  that  of  the  food  which 
they  placed  before  me  I  could  partake  of  only  a  few  spoonfuls 
of  milk ;  and  that  the  old  woman,  as  she  washed  my  feet,  fell 
a  crying  over  me.  I  was,  however,  so  greatly  recruited  by  a 
night's  rest  in  their  best  bed,  as  to  be  fit  in  the  morning  to  be 
removed,  in  the  old  man's  nmgKjart,  to  the  house  of  a  relation 
in  the  parish  of  Nigg,  from  which,  after  a  second  day's  rest,  I 
was  conveyed  in  another  cart  to  the  Cromarty  Ferry.  And 
thus  terminated  the  last  of  my  boyish  visits  to  the  Highlands. 

Both  my  grandfather  and  grandmother  had  come  of  long- 
lived  races,  and  death  did  not  often  knock  at  the  family  door. 
But  the  time  when  the  latter  "  should  cross  the  river,"  though 
she  was  some  six  or  eight  years  younger  than  her  husband, 
came  first ;  and  so,  according  to  Bunyan,  she  "  called  for  her 
children,  and  told  them  that  her  hour  had  come."     She  was 


OR,    THE   STORY   OF   MY   EDUCATION.  117 

a  quiet,  retiring  woman,  and  though  intimately  acquainted 
with  her  Bible,  not  in  the  least  fitted  to  make  a  female  Pro- 
fessor of  Theology  :  she  could  live  her  religion  better  than  talk 
it ;  but  she  now  earnestly  recommended  to  her  family  the  great 
interests  once  more  ;  and,  as  its  various  members  gathered 
round  her  bed,  she  besought  one  of  her  daughters  to  read  to 
her,  in  their  hearing,  that  eighth  chapter  of  the  Romans,  which 
declares  that  there  is  "  now  no  condemnation  to  them  which 
are  in  Christ  Jesus,  who  walk  not  after  the  flesh,  but  after  the 
Spirit."  She  repeated,  in  a  sinking  voice,  the  concluding  verses, 
— "  For  I  am  persuaded,  that  neither  death,  nor  life,  nor  an- 
gels, nor  principalities,  nor  powers,  nor  things  present,  nor 
things  to  come,  nor  height,  nor  depth,  nor  any  other  creature, 
shall  be  able  to  separate  us  from  the  love  of  God,  which  is  in 
Christ  Jesus  our  Lord."  And,  resting  in  confidence  on  the 
hope  which  the  passage  so  powerfully  expresses,  she  slept  her 
last  sleep,  in  simple  trust  that  all  would  be  well  with  her  in 
the  morning  of  the  general  awakening.  I  retain  her  wedding- 
ring,  the  gift  of  Donald  Roy.  It  is  a  sorely  wasted  fragment 
worn  through  on  one  of  the  sides,  for  she  had  toiled  long  and 
hard  in  her  household,  and  the  breach  in  the  circlet,  with  its 
general  thinness,  testify  to  the  fact ;  but  its  gold  is  still  bright 
and  pure ;  and,  though  not  much  of  a  relic-monger,  I  would 
hesitate  to  exchange  it  for  the  Holy  Coat  of  Treves,  or  for 
wagon-loads  of  the  wood  of  the  "  true  cross." 

My  grandmother's  term  of  life  had  exceeded  by  several 
twelvemonths  the  full  threescore  and  ten ;  but  when,  only  a 
few  years  after,  Death  next  visited  the  circle,  it  was  on  its 
youngest  members  that  his  hand  was  laid.  A  deadly  fever 
swept  over  the  place,  and  my  two  sisters, — the  one  in  her 
tenth,  the  other  in  her  twelfth  year, — sank  under  it  within  a 
few  days  of  each  other.  Jean,  the  elder,  who  resided  with  my 
mcles,  was  a  pretty  little  girl,  of  fine  intellect,  and  a  great 
reader ;  Catherine,  the  younger,  was  lively  and  affectionate, 
and  a  general  favorite  ;  and  their  loss  plunged  the  family  in 
deep  gloom.  My  uncles  made  little  show  of  grief,  but  they 
felt  strongly  :  my  mother  for  weeks  and  months  wept  for  her 


118 

children  like  Rachel  of  old,  and  refused  to  be  comforted,  be 
cause  they  were  not ;  but  my  grandfather,  now  in  his  eighty- 
fifth  year,  seemed  to  be  rendered  wholly  bankrupt  in  heart  by 
their  loss.  As  is  perhaps  not  uncommon  in  such  cases,  his 
warmer  affections  strode  across  the  generation  of  gi  own-up 
men  and  women, — his  sons  and  daughters, — and  luxuriated 
among  the  children  of  their  descendants.  The  boys,  his  grand- 
sons, were  too  wild  for  him  ;  but  the  two  little  girls — gentle 
and  affectionate — had  seized  on  his  whole  heart ;  and  now  that 
they  were  gone,  it  seemed  as  if  he  had  nothing  in  the  world 
left  to  care  for.  He  had  been,  up  till  this  time,  notwithstand- 
ing his  great  age,  a  hale  and  active  man.  In  1803,  when  France 
threatened  invasion,  he  was,  though  on  the  verge  of  seventy, 
one  of  the  first  men  of  the  place  to  apply  for  arms  as  a  vol- 
unteer ;  but  he  now  drooped  and  gradually  sank,  and  longed 
for  the  rest  of  the  grave.  "  It  is  God's  will,"  I  heard  him  say 
about  this  time  to  a  neighbor  who  congratulated  him  on  his 
long  term  of  life  and  unbroken  health, — "  It  is  God's  will, 
but  not  my  desire."  And  in  rather  more  than  a  twelvemonth 
after  the  death  of  my  sisters,  he  was  seized  by  almost  his  only 
illness, — for,  for  nearly  seventy  years  he  had  not  been  con- 
fined to  bed  for  a  single  day, — and  was  carried  off  in  less  than 
a  week.  During  the  last  few  days,  the  fever  under  which  he 
/  sank  mounted  to  his  brain  ;  and  he  talked  in  unbroken  nar- 
rative of  the  events  of  his  past  life.  He  began  with  his  ear- 
liest recollections ;  described  the  battle  of  Culloden  as  he  had 
witnessed  it  from  the  Hill  of  Cromarty,  and  the  appearance 
of  Duke  William  and  the  royal  army  as  seen  during  a  subse- 
quent visit  to  Inverness ;  ran  over  the  after  events  of  his  career, 
— his  marriage,  his  interviews  with  Donald  Roy,  his  business 
transactions  with  neighboring  proprietors,  long  dead  at  the 
time  ;  and  finally,  after  reaching,  in  his  oral  history,  his  term 
of  middle  life,  he  struck  off  into  another  tract,  and  began  lay- 
ing down,  with  singular  coherency,  the  statements  of  doctrine 
in  a  theological  work  of  the  old  school,  which  he  had  been  re- 
cently perusing.  And  finally,  his  mind  clearing  as  his  end 
approached,  he  died  in  good  hope.     It  is  not  uninteresting  to 


119 

look  back  on  two  such  generations  of  Scotchmen  as  those  to 
which  my  uncles  and  my  grandfather  belonged.  They  differed 
very  considerably  in  some  respects.  My  grandfather,  with 
raost  ;f  his  contemporaries  of  the  same  class,  had  a  good  deal 
of  the  Tory  in  his  composition.  He  stood  by  George  III.  in 
the  early  policy  of  his  reign,  and  by  his  adviser  Lord  Bute ; 
reprobated  Wilkes  and  Junius;  and  gravely  questioned  wheth- 
er Washington  and  his  coadjutors,  the  American  Republicans, 
were  other  than  bold  rebels.  My  uncles,  on  the  contrary, 
were  staunch  Whigs,  who  looked  upon  Washington  as  perhaps 
the  best  and  greatest  man  of  modern  times, — stood  firm  by  the 
policy  of  Fox,  as  opposed  to  that  of  Pitt, — and  held  that  the 
war  with  France,  which  immediately  succeeded  the  First  Rev 
olution,  was,  however  thoroughly  it  changed  its  character 
afterwards,  one  of  unjustifiable  aggression.  But  however 
greatly  my  uncles  and  grandfather  may  have  differed  on  these 
points,  they  were  equally  honest  men. 

The  rising  generation  can  perhaps  form  no  very  adequate 
conception  of  the  number  and  singular  interest  of  the  links 
which  serve  to  connect  the  recollections  of  a  man  who  has 
seen  his  fiftieth  birth-day,  with  what  to  them  must  appear  a 
remote  past.  I  have  seen  at  least  two  men  who  fought  at  Cul- 
loden, — one  on  the  side  of  the  King,  the  other  on  that  of  the 
Prince, — and,  with  these,  not  a  few  who  witnessed  the  battle 
from  a  distance.  I  have  conversed  with  an  aged  woman  that 
had  conversed,  in  turn,  with  an  aged  man  who  had  attained 
to  mature  manhood  when  the  persecutions  of  Charles  and 
James  were  at  their  height,  and  remembered  the  general  re- 
gret excited  by  the  death  of  Renwick.  My  eldest  maternal 
aunt — the  mother  of  Cousin  George — remembered  old  John 
Feddes, — turned  of  ninety  at  the  time  ;  and  John's  buccaneer- 
ing expedition  could  not  have  dated  later  than  the  year  1637. 
I  have  known  many  who  remembered  the  abolition  of  the  hered- 
itary jurisdictions;  and  have  listened  to  stories  of  executions 
which  took  place  on  the  gallows-hills  of  burghs  and  sheriff- 
doms, and  of  witch-burnings  perpetrated  on  to^n  Links  and 
baronial  Laws.     And  I  have  felt  a  strange  interest  in  these 


120 

glimpses  of  a  past  so  unlike  the  present,  when  thus  preser  tea 
to  the  mind  as  personal  reminiscences,  or  as  well-attested  tradi- 
tions, removed  from  the  original  witnesses  by  but  a  single  stage. 
All,  for  instance,  which  I  have  yet  read  of  witch-burnings  has 
failed  to  impress  me  so  strongly  as  the  recollections  of  an  old 
lady  who  in  1722  was  carried  in  her  nurse's  arms, — for  she  was 
almost  an  infant  at  the  time, — to  witness  a  witch-execution  in 
the  neighborhood  of  Dernoch, — the  last  which  took  place  in 
Scotland.  The  lady  well  remembered  the  awe-struck  yet  ex- 
cited crowd,  the  lighting  of  the  fire,  and  the  miserable  appear- 
ance of  the  poor  fatuous  creature  whom  it  was  kindled  to  con- 
sume, and  who  seemed  to  be  so  little  aware  of  her  situation, 
that  she  held  out  her  thin  shrivelled  hands  to  warm  them  at 
the  blaze.  But  what  most  impressed  the  narrator, — for  it 
must  have  been  a  frightful  incident  in  a  sad  spectacle, — was 
the  circumstance  that,  when  the  charred  remains  of  the  vic- 
tim were  sputtering  and  boiling  amid  the  intense  heat  of  the 
flames,  a  cross  gust  of  wind  suddenly  blew  the  smoke  athwart 
the  spectators,  and  she  felt  in  her  attendant's  arms  as  if  in 
danger  of  being  suffocated  by  the  horrible  stench.  I  have 
heard  described,  too,  by  a  man  whose  father  had  witnessed  the 
scene,  an  execution  which  took  place,  after  a  brief  and  inade- 
quate trial,  on  the  burgh-gallows  of  Tain.  The  supposed  cul- 
prit, a  Strathcarron  Highlander,  had  been  found  lurking  about 
the  place,  noting,  as  was  supposed,  where  the  burghers  kept 
their  cattle,  and  was  hung  as  a  spy ;  but  they  all,  after  the 
execution,  came  to  deem  him  innocent,  from  the  circumstance 
that,  when  his  dead  body  was  dangling  in  the  wind,  a  white 
pigeon  had  come  flying  the  way,  and,  as  it  passed  over,  half- 
encircled  the  gibbet. 

One  of  the  two  Culloden  soldiers  whom  I  remember  was 
an  old  forester,  who  lived  in  a  picturesque  cottage  among  the 
woods  of  the  Cromarty  Hill ;  and  in  his  last  illness,  my  uncles, 
whom  I  had  always  leave  to  accompany,  used  not  unfrequent- 
ly  to  visit  him.  He  had  lived  at  the  time  his  full  century,  and 
a  few  months  more  ;  and  I  still  vividly  remember  the  large 
gaunt  face  that  used  to  stare  from  the  bed  as  they  entered,  and 


121 

tht  nuge,  horny  hand.  He  had  been  settled  in  life,  previous 
to  the  year  1745,  as  the  head  gardener  of  a  northern  proprietor, 
and  little  dreamed  of  being  engaged  in  war ;  but  the  rebellion 
broke  out ;  and  as  his  master,  a  staunch  Whig,  had  volunteered 
to  serve  in  behalf  of  his  principles  in  the  royal  army,  his  gar- 
dener, a  "  mighty  man  of  his  hands,"  went  with  him.  As 
his  memory  for  the  later  events  of  his  life  was  gone  at  this 
time,  its  preceding  forty  years  seemed  a  blank,  from  which  not 
a  single  recollection  could  be  drawn ;  but  well  did  he  remem- 
ber the  battle,  and  more  vividly  still,  the  succeeding  atrocities 
of  the  troops  of  Cumberland.  He  had  accompanied  the  army, 
after  its  victory  at  Culloden,  to  the  camp  at  Fort-Augustus, 
and  there  witnessed  scenes  of  cruelty  and  spoliation  of  which 
the  recollection,  after  the  lapse  of  seventy  years,  and  in  his  ex- 
treme old  age,  had  still  power  enough  to  set  his  Scotch  blood 
aboil.  While  scores  of  cottages  were  flaming  in  the  distance, 
and  blood  not  unfrequently  hissing  on  the  embers,  the  men  and 
women  of  the  army  used  to  be  engaged  in  racing  in  sacks,  or 
upon  Highland  ponies ;  and  when  the  ponies  were  in  request, 
the  women,  who  must  have  sat  for  their  portraits  in  Hogarth's 
"  March  to  Finehley,"  took  their  seats  astride  like  the  men. 
Gold  circulated  and  liquor  flowed  in  abundance;  in  a  few 
weeks  there  were  about  twenty  thousand  head  of  cattle  brought 
in  by  marauding  parties  of  the  soldiery  from  the  crushed  and 
impoverished  Highlanders ;  and  groupes  of  drovers  from  York- 
shire and  the  south  of  Scotland, — coarse  vulgar  men, — used  to 
come  every  day  to  share  in  the  spoil,  by  making  purchases  at 
greatly  less  than  half-price. 

My  grandfather's  recollections  of  Culloden  were  merely  those 
of  an  observant  boy  of  fourteen,  who  had  witnessed  the  battle 
from  a  distance.  The  day,  he  has  told  me,  was  drizzly  and 
thick ;  and  on  reaching  the  brow  of  the  Hill  of  Cromarty, 
where  he  found  many  of  his  townsfolk  already  assembled,  he 
could  scarce  see  the  opposite  land.  But  the  fog  gradually 
cleared  away ;  first  one  hill-top  came  into  view,  and  then  an- 
other ;  till  at  length  the  long  range  of  coast,  from  the  open- 
ing of  the  great  Caledonian  valley  to  the  promontory  of  Burgh- 


122  MY  SCHOOLS  AND   SCHOOLMASTERS; 

head,  was  dimly  visible  through  the  haze.  A  little  after  noon 
there  suddenly  rose  a  round  white  cloud  from  the  Moor  of 
Culloden.  and  then  a  second  round  white  cloud  beside  it. 
And  then  the  two  clouds  mingled  together,  and  went  rolling 
slantways  on  the  wind  towards  the  west ;  and  he  could  hear 
the  rattle  of  the  smaller  fire-arms  mingling  with  the  roar  of  the 
artillery.  And  then,  in  what  seemed  an  exceedingly  brief 
space  of  time,  the  cloud  dissipated  and  disappeared,  the  boon) 
of  the  greatei  guns  ceased,  and  a  sharp  intermittent  patter  of 
musketry  passed  on  towards  Inverness.  But  the  battle  was 
presented  to  the  imagination,  in  these  old  personal  narratives, 
in  many  a  diverse  form.  I  have  been  told  by  an  ancient 
woman,  who,  on  the  day  of  the  fight,  was  engaged  in  tending 
some  sheep  on  a  solitary  common  near  Munlochy,  separated 
from  the  Moor  of  Culloden  by  the  Frith,  and  screened  by  a 
lofty  hill,  that  she  sat  listening  in  terror  to  the  boom  of  the 
cannon ;  but  that  she  was  even  still  more  scared  by  the  con- 
tinuous howling  of  her  dog,  who  sat  upright  on  his  haunches 
all  the  time  the  firing  lasted,  with  his  neck  stretched  out  to- 
wards the  battle,  and  "  looking  as  if  he  saw  a  spirit.''  Such 
are  some  of  the  recollections  which  link  the  memories  of  a  man 
who  has  lived  his  half-century  to  those  of  the  preceding  age, 
and  which  serve  to  remind  him  how  one  generation  of  men 
after  another  break  and  disappear  on  the  shores  of  the  eternal 
world,  as  wave  after  wave  breaks  in  foam  upon  the  beach, 
when  storms  are  rising,  and  the  ground-swell  sets  in  heavily 
from  ^he  sea. 


OR.    THE   STORY   OF   MY   EDUCATION.  123 


CHAPTER   VII. 

Whose  elfin  prowess  scaled  the  orchard  wall. 


Rogers. 


Some  of  the  wealthier  tradesmen  of  the  town,  dissatisfied 
with  the  small  progress  which  their  boys  were  making  under 
the  parish  schoolmaster,  clubbed  together  and  got  a  schoolmaster 
of  their  own  ;  but,  though  a  rather  clever  young  man,  he  proved 
an  unsteady  one,  and  regular  in  his  irregularities,  got  diurnally 
drunk,  on  receiving  the  instalments  of  his  salary  at  term-days, 
as  long  as  his  money  lasted.  Getting  rid  of  him,  they  pro- 
cured another, — a  licentiate  of  the  Church, — who  for  some 
time  promised  well.  He  seemed  steady  and  thoughtful,  and 
withal  a  painstaking  teacher;  but  coming  in  contact  with 
some  zealous  Baptists,  they  succeeded  in  conjuring  up  such  a 
cloud  of  doubt  around  him  regarding  the  propriety  of  infant 
baptism,  that  both  his  bodily  and  mental  health  became  affect- 
ed by  his  perplexities,  and  he  had  to  resign  his  charge.  And 
then,  after  a  pause,  during  which  the  boys  enjoyed  a  delight- 
fully long  vacation,  they  got  yet  a  third  schoolmaster,  also  a 
licentiate,  and  a  person  of  a  high,  if  not  very  consistent  relig- 
ious profession,  who  was  always  getting  into  pecuniary  diffi- 
culties, and  always  courting,  though  with  but  little  success, 
wealthy  ladies  who,  according  to  the  poet,  had  "  acres  of 
charms."  To  the  subscription  school  I  was  transferred,  at  the 
instance  of  Uncle  James,  who  remained  quite  sure,  not  with- 


124:  MY  SCHOOLS  AND    SCHOOLMASTERS  ; 

standing  the  experience  of  the  past,  that  I  was  destined  to  be 
a  scholar.  And,  invariably  fortunate  in  my  opportunities  of 
amusement,  the  transference  took  place  only  a  few  weeks  ere 
the  better  schoolmaster,  losing  health  and  heart  in  a  labyrinth 
of  perplexity,  resigned  his  charge.  I  had  little  more  than 
time  enough  to  look  about  me  on  the  new  forms,  and  to  re- 
new, on  a  firmer  foundation  than  ever,  my  friendship  with  my 
old  associate  of  the  cave, — who  had  been  for  the  two  previous 
years  an  inmate  of  the  subscription  school,  and  was  now  less 
under  maternal  control  than  before, — when  on  came  the  long 
vacation ;  and  for  four  happy  months  I  had  nothing  to  do. 

My  amusements  had  undergone  very  little  change :  I  was 
even  fonder  of  the  shores  and  woods  than  ever,  and  better  ac- 
quainted with  the  rocks  and  caves.  A  very  considerable 
change,  however,  had  taken  place  in  the  amusements  of  the 
school-fellows  my  contemporaries,  who  were  now  from  two  to 
three  years  older  than  when  I  had  been  associated  with  them 
in  the  parish  school.  Hy-spy  had  lost  its  charms ;  nor  was 
there  much  of  its  old  interest  for  them  in  French  and  Eng- 
lish ;  whereas  my  rock  excursions  they  came  to  regard  as 
very  interesting  indeed.  With  the  exception  of  my  friend  of 
the  cave,  they  cared  little  about  rocks  or  stones  ;  but  they  all 
liked  brambles,  and  sloes,  and  craws-apples,  tolerably  well, 
and  took  great  delight  in  assisting  me  to  kindle  fires  in  the 
caverns  of  the  old  coast  line,  at  which  we  used  to  broil  shell- 
fish and  crabs,  taken  among  the  crags  and  boulders  of  the  ebb 
below,  and  roast  potatoes,  transferred  from  the  fields  of  the  hill 
above.  There  was  one  cave,  an  especial  favorite  with  us, 
in  which  our  fires  used  to  blaze  day  after  day  for  weeks  to- 
gether. It  is  deeply  hollowed  in  the  base  of  a  steep  ivy- 
mantled  precipice  of  granitic  gneiss,  a  full  hundred  feet  in 
height ;  and  bears  on  its  smoothed  sides  and  roof,  and  along 
its  uneven  bottom, — fretted  into  pot-like  cavities,  with  large 
round  pebbles  in  them, — unequivocal  evidence  that  the  ex- 
cavating agent  to  which  it  owed  its  existence  had  been  the 
wild  surf  of  this  exposed  shore.  But  for  more  than  two  thou- 
sand years  wave  had  never  reached  it :  the  last  general  eleva- 


OR,   THE    STORY  OF  MY  EDUCATION.  125 

tion  of  the  land  had  raised  it  beyond  the  reach  of  the  highest 
stream-tides ;  and  when  my  gang  and  I  took  possession  of  its 
twilight  recesses,  its  stony  sides  were  crusted  with  mosses  and 
liverworts ;  and  a  crop  of  pale,  attenuated,  sickly-looking  weeds, 
on  which  the  sun  had  never  looked  in  his  strength,  sprang 
thickly  up  over  its  floor.     In  the  remote  past  it  had  been  used 
as  a  sort  of  garner  and  thrashing-place  by  a  farmer  of  the 
parish,  named  Marcus,  who  had  succeeded  in  rearing  crops  of 
bere  and  oats  on  two  sloping  plots  at  the  foot  of  the  cliffs  in 
its  immediate  neighborhood ;  and  it  was  known,  from  this 
circumstance,  to  my  uncles  and  the  older  inhabitants  of  the 
town,  as  Marcus'  Cave.     My  companions,  however,  had  been 
chiefly  drawn  to  it  by  a  much  more  recent  association.     A 
poor  Highland  pensioner, — a  sorely  dilapidated  relic  of  the 
French-American  War,  who  had  fought  under  General  Wolfe 
in  his  day, — had  taken  a  great  fancy  to  the  cave,  and  would 
fain  have  made  it  his  home.     He  was  ill  at  ease  in  his  family  ; 
— his  wife  was  a  termagant,  and  his  daughter  disreputable ; 
and,  desirous  to  quit  their  society  altogether,  and  live  as  a  her- 
mit among  the  rocks,  he  had  made  application  to  the  gentle- 
man who  tenanted  the  farm  above,  to  be  permitted  to  fit  up 
the  cave  for  himself  as  a  dwelling.     So  bad  was  his  English, 
however,  that  the  gentleman  failed  to  understand   him  ;  and 
his  request  was,  as  he  believed,  rejected,  while  it  was  in  reality 
only  not  understood.     Among  the  younger  folk,  the  cave  came 
to  be  known,  from  the  incident,  as  "  Rory  Shingles'  Cave  ;" 
and  my  companions  were  delighted  to  believe  that  they  were 
living  in  it  as  Rory  would  have  lived  had  his  petition  been 
granted.     In  the  wild  half-savage  life  which  we  led,  we  did 
contrive  to  provide  for  ourselves  remarkably  well.    The  rocky 
shores  supplied  us  with  limpets,  periwinkles,  and  crabs,  and 
now  and  then  a  lump-fish  ;  the  rugged  slopes  under  the  pre- 
cipices, with  hips,  sloes,  and  brambles  ;  the  broken  fragments 
of  wreck  along  the  beach,  and  the  wood  above,  furnished  abun- 
dance of  fuel  ;  and  as  there  were  fields  not  half  a  mile  away,  1 
fear  the  more  solid  part  of  our  diet  consisted  often  of  potatoes 
which  we  had  not  planted,  and  of  peas  and  beans  which  we 


126  MY   SCHOOLS   AND   SCHOOLMASTEES  ; 

had  not  sown.  One  of  our  number  contrived  to  bring  away 
a  pot  unobserved  from  his  home  ;  another  succeeded  in  provid- 
ing us  with  a  pitcher :  there  was  a  good  spring  not  two  hun- 
dred yards  from  the  cave  mouth,  which  supplied  us  with  water ; 
and,  thus  possessed  of  not  merely  all  that  nature  requires,  but 
of  a  good  deal  more,  we  contrived  to  fare  sumptuously  every 
/  day.  It  has  been  often  remarked,  that  civilized  man,  when 
placed  in  circumstances  at  all  favorable,  soon  learns  to  as- 
sume the  savage.  I  shall  not  say  that  my  companions  or  my- 
self were  particularly  civilized  in  our  previous  state  ;  but  no- 
thing could  be  more  certain,  than  that  during  our  long  vaca- 
tion we  became  very  happy,  and  tolerably  perfect  savages. 
The  class  which  we  attended  was  of  a  kind  not  opened  in  any 
of  our  accredited  schools,  and  it  might  be  difficult  to  procure 
even  testimonials  in  its  behalf,  easily  procurable  as  these 
usually  are  ;  and  yet,  there  were  some  of  its  lessons  which 
might  be  conned  with  some  little  advantage,  by  one  desirous 
of  cultivating  the  noble  sentiment  of  self-reliance,  or  the  all- 
important  habit  of  self-help.  At  the  time,  however,  they 
appeared  quite  pointless  enough ;  and  the  moral,  as  in  the  case 
of  the  continental  apologue  of  Reynard  the  Fox,  seemed  al- 
ways omitted. 

Our  parties  in  these  excursions  used  at  times  to  swell  out 
to  ten  or  twelve, — at  times  to  contract  to  two  or  three ;  but 
what  they  gained  in  quantity  they  always  lost  in  quality,  and 
became  mischievious  with  the  addition  of  every  new  member, 
in  greatly  more  than  the  arithmetical  ratio.  When  most  in- 
nocent they  consisted  of  only  a  brace  of  members, — a  warm- 
hearted, intelligent  boy  from  the  south  of  Scotland,  who  board- 
ed with  two  elderly  ladies  of  the  place,  and  attended  the  sub- 
scription school ;  and  the  acknowledged  leader  of  the  band, 
who,  belonging  to  the  permanent  irreduciable  staff  of  the  es- 
tablishment, was  never  off  duty.  We  used  to  be  very  happy, 
and  not  altogether  irrational,  in  these  little  skeleton  parties. 
My  new  friend  was  a  gentle,  tasteful  boy,  fond  of  poetry,  and 
a  writer  of  soft,  simple  verses  in  the  old-fashioned  pastoral 
vein,  which  he  never  showed  to  any  one  save  myself;  and  we 


127 

learned  to  love  one  another  all  the  more,  from  the  circum- 
stance that  I  was  of  a  somewhat  bold,  self-relying  tempera- 
ment, and  he  of  a  clinging,  timid  one.  Two  of  the  stanzas  of 
a  little  pastoral,  which  he  addressed  to  me  about  a  twelve- 
month after  this  time,  when  permanently  quitting  the  north 
country  for  Edinburgh,  still  remain  fixed  in  my  memory  ;  and 
I  must  submit  them  to  the  reader,  both  as  adequately  repre- 
sentative of  the  many  others,  their  fellows,  which  have  been 
"  lost,  and  of  that  juvenile  poetry  in  general  which  "  is  written," 
according  to  Sir  Walter  Scott,  "  rather  from  the  recollection 
of  what  has  pleased  the  author  in  others,  than  what  has  been 
suggested  by  his  own  imagination." 

M  To  you  my  poor  sheep,  I  resign 

My  colly,  my  crook,  and  my  horn  : 
To  leave  you,  indeed,  I  repine, 

But  I  must  away  with  the  morn. 
New  scenes  shall  evolve  on  my  sight, 

The  world  and  its  follies  be  new  ; 
But,  ah  !  can  such  scenes  of  delight 

Ere  arise,  as  I  witnessed  with  you?" 

Timid  as  he  naturally  was,  he  soon  learned  to  abide  in  my 
company  terrors  which  most  of  my  bolder  companions  shrank 
from  encountering.  I  was  fond  of  lingering  in  the  caves  until 
long  after  nightfall,  especially  in  those  seasons  when  the  moon 
at  full,  or  but  a  few  days  in  her  wane,  rose  out  of  the  sea  as 
the  evening  wore  on,  to  light  up  the  wild  precipices  of  that 
solitary  shore,  and  to  render  practicable  our  ascending  path  to 
the  Hill  above.  And  Finlay  was  almost  the  only  one  of  my 
band  who  dared  to  encounter  with  me  the  terrors  of  the  dark- 
ness. Our  fire  has  often  startled  the  benighted  boatman  as  he 
came  rowing  round  some  rocky  promontory,  and  saw  the  red 
glare  streaming  seaward  from  the  cavern  mouth,  and  partially 
lighting  up  the  angry  tumbling  of  the  surf  beyond  ;  a'nd  ex- 
cise-cutters have  oftener  than  once  altered  their  track  in  middle 
Frith,  and  come  bearing  towards  the  coast,  to  determine 
whether  the  wild  rocks  of  Marcus  were  not  becoming  a  haunt 
of  smugglers. 

Immediately  beyond  the  granite  gneiss  of  the  Hill  there  is 


128 

a  subaqueous  deposit  of  the  Lias  formation,  never  yet  ex- 
plored by  geologist,  because  never  yet  laid  bare  by  the  ebb  ; 
though  every  heavier  storm  from  the  sea  tells  of  its  existence, 
by  tossing  ashore  fragments  of  its  dark  bituminous  shale.  I 
soon  ascertained  that  the  shale  is  so  largely  charged  with  in- 
flammable matter  as  to  burn  with  a  strong  flame,  as  if  steeped 
in  tar  or  oil,  and  that  I  could  repeat  with  it  the  common  ex- 
periment of  producing  gas  by  means  of  a  tobacco-pipe  luted 
with  clay.  And,  having  read  in  Shakspeare  of  a  fuel  termed 
"  sea  coal,"  and  unaware  at  the  time  that  the  poet  merely 
meant  coal  brought  to  London  by  sea,  I  inferred  that  the  in- 
flammable shale  cast  up  from  the  depths  of  the  Frith  by  the 
waves  could  not  be  other  than  the  veritable  "  sea-coal"  which 
figured  in  the  reminiscences  of  Dame  Quickly  ;  and  so,  as- 
sisted by  Finlay,  who  shared  in  the  interest  which  I  felt  in  the 
substance,  as  at  once  classical  and  an  original  discovery,  I  used 
to  collect  it  in  large  quantities,  and  convert  it  into  smoky  and 
troubled  fires,  that  ever  filled  our  cavern  with  a  horrible  stench, 
and  scented  all  the  shores.  Though  unaware  of  the  fact  at  the 
time,  it  owed  its  inflammability,  not  to  vegetable,  but  to  ani- 
mal substance  ;  the  tar  which  used  to  boil  in  it  to  the  heat, 
like  resin  in  a  faggot  of  moss-fir,  was  as  strange  a  mixture  as 
ever  yet  bubbled  in  witches'  cauldron, — blood  of  pterodactyl e 
and  grease  of  ichthyosaur, — eye  of  belemnite  and  hood  of  nau- 
tilis ;  and  we  learned  to  delight  in  its  very  smell,  all  oppress- 
ive as  that  was,  as  something  wild,  strange,  and  inexplicable. 
Once  or  twice  I  seemed  on  the  eve  of  a  discovery  ;  in  splitting 
the  masses,  I  occasionally  saw  what  appeared  to  be  fragments 
of  shells  embedded  in  its  substance  ;  and  at  least  once  I  laid 
open  a  mysterious-looking  scroll  or  volute,  existing  on  the  dark 
surface  as  a  cream-colored  film  ;  but  though  these  organisms 
aised  a  temporary  wonder,  it  was  not  until  a  later  period  that 
I  learned  to  comprehend  their  true  import,  as  the  half-effaced 
but  still  decipherable  characters  of  a  marvellous  record  of  the 
gray,  dream-encircled  past. 

With  tne  docile  Finley  as  my  companion,  and  left  to  work 
out  my  own  will  unchallenged,  I  was  rarely  or  never  mischie- 


OR,   THE  STORY  OF   MY  EDUCATION.  129 

vous.  On  the  occasions,  however,  in  which  my  band  swelled 
out  to  ten  or  a  dozen,  I  often  experienced  the  ordinary  evils  of 
leadership,  as  known  in  all  gangs  and  parties,  civil  and  eccle- 
siastical;  and  was  sometimes  led,  in  consequence,  to  engage  in 
enterprises  which  my  better  judgment  condemned.  I  fain  wish 
that  among  the  other  "  Confessions"  writh  which  our  literature 
is  charged,  wre  had  the  bona  Jide  "  Confessions  of  a  Leader," 
with  examples  of  the  cases  in  which,  though  he  seems  to  over- 
bear, he  is  in  reality  overborne,  and  acfually  follows,  though 
he  appears  to  lead.  Honest  Sir  William  Wallace,  though 
seven  feet  high,  and  a  hero,  was  at  once  candid  and  humble 
enough  to  confess  to  the  canons  of  Hexham,  that,  his  "  sol- 
diers being  evil-disposed  men,"  whom  he  could  neither  "jus- 
tify nor  punish,"  he  was  able  to  protect  women  and  Church- 
men only  so  long  as  they  "  abided  in  his  sight."  And,  of 
course,  other  leaders,  less  tall  and  less  heroic,  must  not  unfre- 
quently find  themselves,  had  they  but  Wallace'.-  magnanimity 
to  confess  the  fact,  in  circumstances  much  akin  to  those  of 
Wallace.  When  bee-masters  get  hold  of  queen  bees,  they 
are  able,  by  controlling  the  movements  of  these  natural  leaders 
of  hives,  to  control  the  movements  of  the  hives  themselves  ; 
and  not  unfrequently  in  Churches  and  States  do  there  exist 
inconspicuous  bee-masters,  who,  by  influencing  or  controlling 
the  leader-bees,  in  reality  influence  and  control  the  move- 
ments of  the  entire  body,  politic  or  ecclesiastical,  over  which 
these  natural  monarchs  seem  to  preside.  But  truce  with  apol- 
ogy. Partly  in  the  character  of  a  leader, — partly  being  my 
self  led, — I  succeeded  about  this  time  in  getting  one  of  my 
larger  parties  into  a  tolerably  serious  scrape.  We  passed  every 
day,  on  our  wTay  to  the  cave,  a  fine  large  orchard,  attached  to 
the  manor-house  of  the  Cromarty  estate  ;  and  in  ascending  an 
adjacent  hill  over  which  our  path  lay,  and  which  commands  a 
bird's-eye  view  of  the  trim-kept  wTalks  and  well-laden  trees, 
there  used  not  unfrequently  to  arise  wild  speculations  among 
us  regarding  the  possibility  and  propriety  of  getting  a  supply 
of  the  fruit,  to  serve  as  desserts  to  our  meals  of  shell-fish  and 
potatoes.     Weeks  elapsed,  howrever,  and  autumn  was  drawing 


130 

on  to  its  close,  ere  we  could  quite  make  up  our  minds  regard- 
ing the  adventure,  when  at  length  I  agreed  to  lead ;  and,  after 
arranging  the  plan  of  the  expedition,  we  broke  into  the  or- 
chard under  the  cloud  of  night,  and  carried  away  with  us 
whole  pocketfuls  of  apples.  They  were  all  intolerably  bad, — 
sour,  hard,  baking-apples ;  for  we  had  delayed  the  enterprise 
until  the  better  fruit  had  been  pulled  ;  but  though  they  set 
our  teeth  on  edge,  and  we  flung  most  of  them  into  the  sea,  we 
had  "  snatched,"  in  the  foray,  what  Gray  well  terms  "  a  fear- 
ful joy,"  and  had  some  thought  of  repeating  it,  merely  for  the 
sake  of  the  excitement  induced  and  the  risk  encountered,  when 
out  came  the  astounding  fact,  that  one  of  our  number  had 
"  peached,"  and,  in  the  character  of  king's  evidence,  betrayed 
his  companions. 

The  factor  of  the  Cromarty  property  had  an  orphan  nephew, 
who  formed  at  times  a  member  of  our  gang,  and  who  had 
taken  a  willing  part  in  the  orchard  foray.  He  had  also  en- 
gaged, however,  in  a  second  enterprise  of  a  similar  kind  wholly 
on  his  own  account,  of  which  we  knew  nothing.  An  out- 
house pertaining  to  the  dwelling  in  which  he  lodged,  though 
itself  situated  outside  the  orchard,  was  attached  to  another 
house  inside  the  walls,  which  was  employed  by  the  gardener 
as  a  store-place  for  his  apples ;  and  finding  an  unsuspected 
crevice  in  the  partition  which  divided  the  two  buildings,  some- 
what resembling  that  through  which  Pyramus  and  Thisbe 
made  love  of  old  in  the  city  of  Babylon,  our  comrade,  straight- 
way availing  himself  of  so  fair  an  opening,  fell  a-courting 
the  gardener's  apples.  Sharpening  the  end  of  a  long  stick,  he 
began  harpooning,  through  the  hole,  the  apple  heap  below  ; 
and  though  the  hole  was  greatly  too  small  for  admitting  the 
finer  and  larger  specimens,  and  they,  in  consequence,  fell  back 
disengaged  from  the  harpoon,  in  the  attempt  to  land  them,  ht 
succeeded  in  getting  a  good  many  of  the  smaller  ones.  Old 
John  Clark  the  gardener, — far  advanced  in  life  at  the  time, 
and  seeing  too  imperfectly  to  discover  the  crevice  which  open- 
ed high  amid  the  obscurity  of  the  loft, — was  in  a  perfect  maze 
regarding  the  evil  influence  that  was  destroying  his  apples. 


131 

The  harpooned  individuals  lay  scattered  over  the  floor  by  scores ; 
but  the  agent  that  had  dispersed  and  perforated  them  remained 
for  weeks  together  an  inscrutable  mystery  to  John.  At 
length,  however,  there  came  a  luckless  morning,  in  which  our 
quondam  companion  lost  hold,  when  busy  at  work,  of  the 
pointed  stick  ;  and  when  John  next  entered  his  store-house, 
the  guilty  harpoon  lay  stretched  across  the  harpooned  apples. 
The  discovery  was  followed  up  ;  the  culprit  detected  ;  and,  on 
being  closeted  with  his  uncle  the  factor,  he  communicated  no 
only  the  details  of  his  own  special  adventure,  but  the  particu 
lars  of  ours  also.  And  early  next  day  there  was  a  message 
sent  us  by  a  safe  and  secret  messenger,  to  the  effect  that  we 
would  be  all  put  in  prison  in  the  course  of  the  week. 

We  were  terribly  frightened ;  so  much  so,  that  the  strong 
point  of  our  position — the  double-dyed  guilt  of  the  factor's 
nephew — failed  to  occur  to  any  of  us  ;  and  we  looked  for  only 
instant  incarceration.  I  still  remember  the  intense  feeling  of 
shame  I  used  to  experience  every  time  I  crossed  my  mother's 
door  for  th«".  street, — the  agonizing,  all-engrossing  belief  that 
every  one  was  looking  at  and  pointing  me  out, — and  the  ter- 
ror, when  in  my  uncles', — akin  to  that  of  the  culprit  who  hears 
from  his  box  the  footsteps  of  the  returning  jury, — that,  having 
learned  of  my  offence,  they  were  preparing  to  denounce  me 
as  a  disgrace  to  an  honest  family,  on  which,  in  the  memory 
of  man,  no  stain  had  rested  before.  The  discipline  was  emi- 
nently wholesome,  and  I  never  forgot  it.  It  did  seem  some- 
what strange,  however,  that  no  one  appeared  to  know  any- 
thing about  our  misdemeanor :  the  factor  kept  our  secret  re- 
markably well ;  but  we  inferred  he  was  doing  so  in  order  to 
pounce  upon  us  all  the  more  effectually ;  and,  holding  a  hasty 
council  in  the  cave,  we  resolved  that,  quitting  our  homes  for 
a  few  weeks,  we  should  live  among  the  rocks  till  the  storm 
that  seemed  rising  should  have  blown  by. 

Marcus'  Cave  was  too  accessible  and  too  well  known  ;  but 

my  knowledge  of  the  locality  enabled  me  to  recommend  to  my 

lads  two  other  caves  in  which  I  thought  we  might  be  safe. 

The  one  opened  in  a  thicket  of  furze,  some  forty  feet  above 

7 


132 

the  shore ;  and,  though  large  enough  within  to  contain  from 
fifteen  to  twenty  men,  it  presented  outside  much  the  appear- 
ance of  a  fox-earth,  and  was  not  known  to  half-a-dozen  people 
in  the  country.  It  was,  however,  damp  and  dark ;  and  we 
found  that  we  could  not  venture  on  lighting  a  fire  in  it  with 
out  danger  of  suffocation.  It  was  pronounced  excellent,  how- 
ever, as  a  temporary  place  of  concealment,  were  the  search  for 
as  to  become  \ery  hot.  The  other  cavern  was  wide  and  open  ; 
out  it  was  a  wild,  ghostly-looking  place,  scarcely  once  visited 
from  one  twelvemonth's  end  to  another ;  its  floor  was  green 
with  mould,  and  its  ridgy  walls  and  roof  bristled  over  with 
slim  pale  stalactites,  which  looked  like  the  pointed  tags  that 
roughen  a  dead  dress.  It  was  certain,  too,  that  it  was  haunt- 
ed. Marks  of  a  cloven  foot  might  be  seen  freshly  impressed 
on  its  floor,  which  had  been  produced  either  by  a  stray  goat,  or 
by  something  worse;  and  the  few  boys  to  whom  its  existence 
and  character  were  known  used  to  speak  of  it  under  their 
breath  as  "  the  Devil's  Cave."  My  lads  did  at  first  look  round 
them,  as  we  entered,  with  an  awe-struck  and  disconsolate 
expression ;  but  falling  busily  to  work  among  the  cliffs,  we 
collected  large  quantities  of  withered  grass  and  fern  for  bed- 
ding, and,  selecting  the  drier  and  less  exposed  portions  of  the 
floor,  soon  piled  up  for  ourselves  a  row  of  little  lairs,  formed 
in  a  sort  of  half-way  style  between  that  of  the  wild  beast  and 
the  gipsy,  on  which  it  would  have  been  possible  enough  to 
sleep.  We  selected,  too,  a  place  for  our  fire,  gathered  a  little 
heap  of  fuel,  and  secreted  in  a  recess,  for  ready  use,  our  Mar- 
cus' Cave  pot  and  pitcher,  and  the  lethal  weapons  of  the 
gang,  which  consisted  of  an  old  bayonet  so  corroded  with  rust 
that  it  somewhat  resembled  a  three-edged  saw,  and  an  old 
horseman's  pistol  tied  fast  to  the  stock  by  cobblers  ends,  and 
with  lock  and  ramrod  awanting.  Evening  surprised  us  in  the 
middle  of  our  preparations ;  and  as  the  shadows  fell  dark  and 
thick,  my  lads  began  to  look  most  uncomfortably  around  them. 
At  length  they  fairly  struck  work ;  there  was  no  use,  they 
said,  for  being  in  the  Devil's  Cave  so  late, — no  use,  indeed,  foi 
being  in  it  at  all,  until  we  were  made  sure  the  factor  did  ao 


133 

tually  intend  to  imprison  us ;  and,  after  delivering  themselves 
to  this  effect,  they  fairly  bolted,  leaving  Finlay  and  myself  to 
bring  up  the  rear  at  our  leisure.  My  well-laid  plan  was,  in 
short,  found  unworkable,  from  the  inferior  quality  of  my  ma- 
terials. I  returned  home  with  a  heavy  heart,  somewhat  grieved 
that  I  had  not  confided  my  scheme  to  only  Finlay,  who  could, 
1  ascertained,  do  braver  things,  with  all  his  timidity,  than  the 
bchbr  boys,  our  occasional  associates.  And  yet,  when,  in 
passing  homewards  through  the  dark  lonely  woods  of  the 
Hill,  I  bethought  me  of  the  still  deeper  solitude  and  gloom  of 
the  haunted  cave  far  below,  and  thought  further,  that  at  that 
very  moment  the  mysterious  being  with  the  cloven  feet  might 
be  traversing  its  silent  floor,  I  felt  my  blood  run  cold,  and  at 
once  leaped  to  the  conclusion  that,  save  for  the  disgrace,  a 
cave  with  an  evil  spirit  in  it  could  be  not  a  great  deal  better 
than  a  prison.  Of  the  prison,  however,  we  heard  no  more ; 
though  I  never  forgot  the  grim  but  precious  lesson  read  me 
by  the  factor's  threat ;  and  from  that  time  till  the  present, — 
save  now  and  then,  by  inadvertently  admitting  into  my  news- 
paper a  paragraph  written  in  too  terse  a  style  by  some  good 
man  in  the  provinces,  against  some  very  bad  man  his  neigh- 
bor,— I  have  not  been  fairly  within  wind  of  the  law.  I  would, 
however,  seriously  advise  such  of  my  young  friends  as  may 
cast  a  curious  eye  over  these  pages,  to  avoid  taking  any  such 
lesson  as  mine  at  first-hand.  One  half-hour  of  the  mental 
anguish  which  I  at  this  time  experienced,  when  I  thought  of 
my  mother  and  uncles,  and  the  infamy  of  a  prison,  would 
have  vastly  more  than  counterbalanced  all  that  could  have 
been  enjoyed  from  banqueting  on  apples,  even  had  they  been 
those  of  the  Hesperides  or  of  Eden,  instead  of  being,  what 
they  were  in  this  case,  green  masses  of  harsh  acid,  alike  for- 
midable to  teeth  and  stomach.  I  must  add,  in  justice  to  my 
friend  of  the  Doocot  Cave,  that,  though  an  occasional  visitor 
at  Marcus,  he  had  prudently  avoided  getting  into  this  scrape. 
Our  long  vacation  came  at  length  to  an  end,  by  the  ap- 
pointment of  a  teacher  to  the  subscription  school ;  but  the  ar- 
rangement was  not  the  most  profitable  possible  for  the  pupils. 


134 

It  was  an  ominous  circumstance,  that  we  learned  in  a  few  days 
to  designate  the  new  master  by  a  nickname,  and  that  the  name 
stuck, — a  misfortune  which  almost  never  befalls  the  truly  su- 
perior man.  He  had,  however,  a  certain  dash  of  cleverness 
about  him ;  and  observing  that  I  was  of  potent  influence 
among  my  school-fellows,  he  set  himself  to  determine  the 
grounds  on  which  my  authority  rested.  Copy  and  arithmetic 
books  in  schools  in  which  there  was  liberty  used  in  those  an- 
cient times  to  be  charged  with  curious  revelations.  In  the 
parish  school,  for  instance,  which  excelled,  as  I  have  said, 
every  other  school  in  the  world  in  its  knowledge  of  barks  and 
carvels,  it  was  not  uncommon  to  find  a  book  which,  when  opened 
at  the  right  end,  presented  only  copy-lines  or  arithmetical 
questions,  that  when  opened  at  the  wrong  one,  presented  only 
ships  and  boats.  And  there  were  cases  on  record  in  which,  on 
the  grand  annual  examination-day  that  heralded  the  vacation, 
the  worthy  parish  minister,  by  beginning  to  turn  over  the 
leaves  of  some  exhibited  book  at  the  reverse  end,  found  him- 
self engaged,  when  expecting  only  the  questions  of  Cocker,  or 
the  ship-lines  of  Butterworth,  amid  whole  fleets  of  smacks, 
frigates,  and  brigantines.  My  new  master,  professionally  ac- 
quainted with  this  secret  property  of  arithmetic  and  copy- 
books, laid  hold  of  mine,  and,  bringing  them  to  his  desk, 
found  them  charged  with  very  extraordinary  revelations  in- 
deed. The  blank  spaces  were  occupied  with  deplorably  scrab- 
bled couplets  and  stanzas,  blent  with  occasional  remarks  in 
rude  prose,  that  dealt  chiefly  with  natural  phenomena.  One 
note,  for  instance,  which  the  master  took  the  trouble  of  de- 
ciphering, referred  to  the  supposed  fact,  familiar  as  a  matter 
of  sensation  to  boys  located  on  the  sea-coast,  that  during  the 
bathing  season  the  water  is  warmer  in  windy  days,  when  the 
waves  break  high,  than  during  dead  calms ;  and  accounted  for 
it  (I  fear,  not  very  philosophically)  on  the  hypothesis  that  the 
"  waves,  by  slapping  against  each  other,  engender  heat,  as 
heat  may  be  engendered  by  clapping  the  hands."  The  master 
read  on,  evidently  with  much  difficulty,  and  apparently  with 
considerable  scepticism  :  he  inferred  that  I  had  been  borrow- 


135 

ing,  not  inventing ;  though  where  such  prose  and  such  verse 
could  have  been  borrowed,  and,  in  especial,  such  grammar 
and  such  spelling,  even  cleverer  men  than  he  might  well  have 
despaired  of  ever  finding  out.  And  in  order  to  test  my  pow- 
ers, he  proposed  furnishing  me  with  a  theme  on  which  to 
write.  "  Let  us  see,"  he  said,  "  let  us  see  :  the  dancing-school 
ball  comes  on  here  next  week ; — bring  me  a  poem  on  the 
dancing-school  ball."  The  subject  did  not  promise  a  great 
deal ;  but,  setting  myself  to  work  in  the  evening,  I  produced 
half-a-dozen  stanzas  on  the  ball,  which  were  received  as  good, 
in  evidence  that  I  actually  could  rhyme ;  and  for  some  weeks 
after  I  was  rather  a  favorite  with  the  new  master. 

I  had,  however,  ere  now  become  a  wild  insubordinate  boy, 
and  the  only  school  in  which  I  could  properly  be  taught  was 
that  world-wide  school  which  awaited  me,  in  which  Toil  and 
Hardship  are  the  severe  but  noble  teachers.  I  got  into  sad 
scrapes.  Quarrelling,  on  one  occasion,  with  a  boy  of  my  own 
standing,  we  exchanged  blows  across  the  form ;  and  when 
called  up  for  trial  and  punishment,  the  fault  was  found  to  at- 
tach so  equally  to  both  sides,  that  the  same  number  ot'pahnies, 
well  laid  on,  were  awarded  to  each.  I  bore  mine,  however, 
like  a  North  American  Indian,  whereas  my  antagonist  began 
to  howl  and  cry  ;  and  I  could  not  resist  the  temptation  of  say- 
ing to  him,  in  a  whisper  that  unluckily  reached  the  ear  of  the 
master,  "  Ye  big  blubbering  blockhead,  take  that  for  a  drub- 
bing from  me."  I  had  of  course  to  receive  a  few  palmies  ad- 
ditional for  the  speech ;  but  then,  "  who  oared  for  that  V  The 
master,  however,  "  cared  "  considerably  more  for  the  offence 
than  I  did  for  the  punishment.  And  in  a  subsequent  quarrel 
with,  another  boy, — a  stout  and  somewhat  desperate  mulatto, 
— I  got  into  a  worse  scrape  still,  of  which  ho  thought  still 
worse.  The  mulatto,  in  his  battles,  which  were  many,  had  a 
trick,  when  in  danger  of  being  over-matched,  of  drawing  his 
knife ;  and  in  our  affair — the  necessities  of  the  fight  seeming 
to  require  it — he  drew  his  knife  upon  me.  To  his  horror  and 
astonishment,  however,  instead  of  running  off,  I  immediately 
drew  mine,  and,  quick  as  lightning,  stabbed  him  in  the  thigh. 


136  MY  SCHOOLS   AND  SCHOOLMASTEKS  ; 

He  roared  out  in  fright  and  pain,  and,  though  more  alarmed  than 
hurt,  never  after  drew  knife  upon  a  combatant.  But  the  value 
of  the  lesson  which  I  gave  was,  like  most  other  very  valuable 
things,  inadequately  appreciated  ;  and  it  merely  procured  for 
me  the  character  of  being  a  dangerous  boy.  I  had  certainly 
reached  a  dangerous  stage ;  but  it  was  mainly  myself  that  was 
in  jeopardy.  There  is  a  transition  time  in  which  the  strength 
and  independence  of  the  latent  man  begin  to  mingle  with  the 
wilfulness  and  indiscretion  of  the  mere  boy,  which  is  more 
perilous  than  any  other,  and  in  which  many  more  downward 
careers  of  recklessness  and  folly  begin,  that  end  in  wreck  and 
ruin,  than  in  all  the  other  years  of  life  which  intervene  be- 
tween childhood  and  old  age.  The  growing  lad  should  be 
wisely  and  tenderly  dealt  with  at  this  critical  stage.  The  se- 
verity that  would  fain  compel  the  implicit  submission  yielded 
at  an  earlier  period,  would  probably  succeed,  if  his  character 
was  a  strong  one,  in  ensuring  but  his  ruin.  It  is  at  this  tran- 
sition stage  that  boys  run  off  to  sea  from  their  parents  and 
masters,  or,  when  tall  enough,  enlist  in  the  army  for  soldiers. 
The  strictly  orthodox  parent,  if  more  severe  than  wise,  suc- 
ceeds occasionally  in  driving,  during  this  crisis,  his  son  into 
Popery,  or  infidelity ;  and  the  sternly  moral  one,  in  landing 
/his  in  utter  profligacy.  But,  leniently  and  judiciously  dealt 
'  with,  the  dangerous  period  passes ;  in  a  few  years  at  most, — 
in  some  instances  in  even  a  few  months, — the  sobriety  inci- 
dental to  a  further  development  of  character  ensues,  and  the 
wild  boy  settles  down  into  a  rational  young  man. 

It  so  chanced,  however,  that  in  what  proved  the  closing 
scene  in  my  term  of  school  attendance,  I  was  rather  unfor- 
,  tunate  than  guilty.  The  class  to  which  I  now  belonged  read 
an  English  lesson  every  afternoon,  and  had  its  rounds  of 
spelling ;  and  in  these  last  I  acquitted  myself  but  ill ;  partly 
from  the  circumstance  that  I  spelt  only  indifferently,  but  still 
more  from  the  further  circumstance,  that,  retaining  strongly 
fixed  in  my  memory  the  broad  Scotch  pronunciation  acquired 
at  the  dames'  school  I  had  to  carry  on  in  my  mind  the  double 
process  of  at  once  spelling  the  required  word,  and  of  trans 


OK,   THE   STORY   OF   MY   EDUCATION.  137 

lating  the  ok  sounds  of  the  letters  of  which  it  was  composed 
into  the  modern  ones.  Nor  had  I  been  taught  to  break  the 
words  into  syllables ;  and  so,  when  required  one  evening  to 
spell  the  word  " awful"  with  much  deliberation, — for  I  had 
to  translate,  as  I  went  on,  the  letters  a-w  and  u, — I  spelt,  it 
word  for  word,  without  break  or  pause,  as  a-w-f-u-1.  "  No," 
said  the  master;  "a-w,  aw,  f-u-1,  awful;  spell  again."  This 
seemed  preposterous  spelling.  It  was  sticking  in  an  a,  as 
thought,  into  the  middle  of  the  word,  where,  I  was  sure,  no 
had  a  right  to  be ;  and  so  I  spelt  it  as  at  first.  The  master 
recompensed  my  supposed  contumacy  with  a  sharp  cut  athwart 
the  ears  with  his  taws ;  and  again  demanding  the  spelling  of 
the  word,  I  yet  again  spelt  it  as  at  first.  But  on  receiving  a 
second  cut,  I  refused  to  spell  it  any  more  ;  and,  determined  on 
overcoming  my  obstinacy,  he  laid  hold  of  me,  and  attempted 
throwing  me  down.  As  wrestling  had,  however,  been  one  of 
our  favorite  Marcus'  Cave  exercises,  and  as  few  lads  of  my 
inches  wrestled  better  than  I,  the  master,  though  a  tall  and 
tolerably  robust  fellow,  found  the  feat  considerably  more 
difficult  than  he  could  have  supposed.  We  swayed  from  side 
to  side  of  the  school-room,  now  backwards,  now  forwards,  and 
for  a  full  minute  it  seemed  to  be  rather  a  moot  point  on  which 
side  the  victory  was  to  incline.  At  length,  however,  I  was 
tripped  over  a  form ;  and  as  the  master  had  to  deal  with  me, 
not  as  master  usually  deals  with  pupil,  but  as  one  combatant 
deals  with  another,  whom  he  has  to  beat  into  submission,  I 
was  mauled  in  a  way  that  filled  me  with  aches  and  bruises  for 
a  full  month  thereafter.  I  greatly  fear  that,  had  I  met  the 
fellow  on  a  lonely  road  five  years  subsequent  to  our  encounter, 
when  I  had  become  strong  enough  to  raise  breast-hign  the 
"  great  lifting  stone  of  the  Dropping  Cave,"  he  would  have 
caught  as  sound  a  thrashing  as  he  ever  gave  to  little  boy  or 
girl  in  his  life ;  but  all  I  could  do  at  this  time  was  to  take 
down  my  cap  from  off  the  pin,  when  the  affair  had  ended,  and 
march  straight  out  of  school.  And  thus  terminated  my  school 
education.  Before  night  I  had  avenged  myself,  in  a  copy  of 
satiric  verses,  entitled  "The  Pedagogue,"  which — as  they  had 


138 

some  little  cleverness  in  them,  regarded  as  the  work  of  a  boy, 
and  as  the  known  eccentricities  of  their  subject  gave  me  large 
scope — occasioned  a  good  deal  of  merriment  in  the  place  ; 
and  of  the  verses  a  fair  copy,  written  out  by  Finlay,  was 
transmitted  through  the  Post-Office  to  the  pedagogue  himself. 
But  the  only  notice  he  ever  took  of  them  was  incidentally, 
in  a  short  speech  made  to  the  copyist  a  few  days  after.  "  1 
gee,  Sir,"  he  said. — "  I  see  you  still  associate  with  that  fellow 
Miller ;  perhaps  he  will  make  you  a  poet !"  "  I  had  thought, 
Sir,"  said  Finlay,  very  quietly,  in  reply,  "  that  poets  were 
born, — not  made." 

As  a  specimen  of  the  rhyme  of  this  period,  and  as  in  some 
degree  a  set-off  against  my  drubbing,  which  remains  till  this 
day  an  unsettled  score,  I  submit  my  pasquinade  to  the  reader. 

THE  PEDAGOGUE. 

With  9olemn  mien  and  pious  air, 

S— k — r  attends  each  call  of  grace  ; 
Loud  eloquence  bedecks  his  prayer, 

And  formal  sanctity  his  face. 

All  good  ;  but  turn  the  other  side, 
And  see  the  smirking  beau  displayed  ; 
The  pompous  strut,  exalted  air, 
And  all  that  marks  the  fop,  is  there. 

In  character  we  seldom  see 

Traits  so  diverse  meet  and  agree : 

Can  the  affected  mincing  trip, 

Exalted  brow,  and  pride-pressed  lip, 

In  strange  incongruous  union  meet, 

With  all  that  stamps  the  hypocrite  ? 

We  see  they  do :  but  let  us  scan 

Those  secret  springs  which  move  the  man. 

Though  now  he  wields  the  knotty  birch, 
Hi9  better  hope  lies  in  the  Church  : 
For  this  the  sable  robe  he  wears, 
For  this  in  pious  guise  appears. 
But  then,  the  weak  will  cannot  hide 
Th'  inherent  vanity  and  pride  ; 
And  thus  he  acts  the  coxcomb's  part, 
As  dearer  to  his  poor  vain  heart  : 
Nature's  boru  fop  !  a  saint  by  art ! ! 


139 

But,  hold,  he  wears  no  fopling's  dress; 
Each  seam,  each  thread   the  eye  can  trace, 
His  garb  all  o'er  ; — the  i.ye,  though  true, 
Time-blanch'd,  displays  a  fainter  hue: 
Dress  forms  the  fopling's  better  part ; — 
Reconcile  this  and  prove  your  art. 

M  ChHl  penury  represses  pride  ;" — 
A  maxim  by  the  wise  denied  ; 
For  'tis  alone  tame  plodding  souls, 
Whose  spirits  bend  when  it  controls,- 
Whose  lives  run  on  in  one  dull  same, 
Plain  honesty  their  highest  aim. 
With  him  it  merely  can  repress — 
Tailor  o'er-cowed — the  pomp  of  dress  ; 
His  spirit,  unrepressed,  can  soar 
High  as  e'er  folly  rose  before; 
Can  fly  pale  study,  learn'd  debate, 
And  ape  proud  fashion's  idle  state  ; 
Yet  fails  in  that  engaging  grace 
That  lights  the  practis'd  courtier's  face. 
His  weak  affecled  air  we  mark, 
And,  smiling,  view  the  would-be  spark; 
Complete  in  every  act  and  feature, — 
An  ill-bred,  silly,  awkward  creature. 

My  school-days  fairly  over,  a  life  of  toil  frowned  full  in 
front  of  me ;  but  never  yet  was  there  half-grown  lad  less 
willing  to  take  up  the  man  and  lay  down  the  boy.  My  set  of 
companions  was  fast  breaking  up  ; — my  friend  of  the  Doocot 
Cave  was  on  the  eve  of  proceeding  to  an  academy  in  a  neigh- 
boring town  ;  Finlay  had  received  a  call  from  the  south,  to 
finish  his  education  in  a  seminary  on  the  banks  of  the  Tweed ; 
one  Marcus'  Cave  lad  was  preparing  to  go  to  sea ;  another 
to  learn  a  trade ;  a  third  to  enter  a  shop :  the  time  of  dis- 
persal was  too  evidently  at  hand ;  and,  taking  counsel  one 
day  together,  we  resolved  on  constructing  something — we  at 
first  knew  not  what — that  might  serve  as  a  monument  to  re- 
call to  us  in  after  years  the  memory  of  our  early  pastimes  and 
enjoyments.  The  common  school-book  story  of  the  Persian 
shepherd,  who,  when  raised  by  his  sovereign  to  high  place  in 
the  empire,  derived  his  chief  pleasure  from  contemplating,  in 
a  secret  apartment^  the  pipe,  crook,  and  rude  habiliments  of 


140  MY   SCHOOLS  AND  SCHOOLMASTERS  ; 

his  happier  days,  suggested  to  me  that  we  also  should  have 
our  secret  apartment,  in  which  to  store  up,  for  future  contem- 
plation, our  bayonet  and  pistol,  pot  and  pitcher ;  and  I  rec- 
ommended that  we  should  set  ourselves  to  dig  a  subterranean 
chamber  for  that  purpose  among  the  woods  of  the  hill,  accessi- 
ble, like  the  mysterious  vaults  of  our  story-books,  by  a  trap 
door.  The  proposal  was  favorably  received  ;  and,  selecting 
a  solitary  spot  among  the  trees  as  a  proper  site,  and  procur- 
ing spade  and  mattock,  we  began  to  dig. 

Soon  passing  through  the  thin  crust  of  vegetable  mould,  we 
found  the  red  boulder  clay  beneath  exceedingly  stiff  and  hard  ; 
but  day  after  day  saw  us  perseveringly  at  work  ;  and  we  suc- 
2eeded  in  digging  a  huge  square  pit,  about  six  feet  in  length 
and  breadth,  and  fully  seven  feet  deep.  Fixing  four  upright 
posts  in  the  corners,  we  lined  our  apartment  with  slender  spars 
nailed  closely  together ;  and  we  had  prepared  for  giving  it  a 
massive  roof  of  beams  formed  of  fallen  trees,  and  strong 
enough  to  bear  a  layer  of  earth  and  turf  from  a  foot  to  a  foot 
and  a  half  in  depth,  with  a  little  opening  for  the  trap-door; 
when  we  found,  one  morning,  on  pressing  onwards  to  the  scene 
of  our  labors,  that  we  were  doggedly  tracked  by  a  horde  of 
boys  considerably  more  numerous  than  our  own  party.  Their 
curiosity  had  been  excited,  like  that  of  the  Princess  Nekayah 
in  Rasselas,  by  the  tools  which  we  carried,  and  by  "  seeing 
that  we  had  directed  our  walk  every  day  to  the  same  point ;" 
and  in  vain,  by  running  and  doubling,  by  scolding  and  remon- 
strating, did  we  now  attempt  shaking  them  off.  I  saw  that, 
were  we  to  provoke  a  general  melee,  we  could  scarce  expect 
to  come  off  victors ;  but  deeming  myself  fully  a  match  for 
their  stoutest  boy,  I  stepped  out  and  challenged  him  to  come 
forward  and  fight  me.  He  hesitated,  looked  foolish,  and  re- 
fused, but  said,  he  would  readily  fight  with  any  of  my  party 
except  myself.  I  immediately  named  my  friend  of  the  Doocot 
Cave,  who  leaped  out  with  a  bound  to  meet  him ;  but  the  boy, 
as  I  had  anticipated,  refused  to  fight  him  also ;  and,  observing 
the  proper  effect  produced,  I  ordered  my  lads  to  march  for- 
ward ;  and  from  an  upper  slope  of  the  hill  we  had  the  satisfac- 


141 

tion  of  seeing  that  our  pursuers,  after  lingering  for  a  little  while 
on  the  spot  on  which  Me  had  left  them,  turned  homewards, 
fairly  cowed,  and  pursued  us  no  more.  But,  alas  !  on  reach- 
ing our  secret  chamber,  we  ascertained,  by  marks  all  too  un- 
equivocal, that  it  was  to  be  secret  no  longer.  Some  rude  hand 
had  torn  down  the  wooden  lining,  and  cut  two  of  the  posts 
half  through  with  a  hatchet ;  and  on  returning  disconsolately 
to  th<>  town,  we  ascertained  that  Johnstone,  the  forester,  had 
just  been  there  before  us,  declaring  that  some  atrociously 
wicked  persons — for  whose  apprehension  a  proclamation  was 
to  be  instantly  issued — had  contrived  a  diabolical  trap,  which 
he  had  just  discovered,  for  maiming  the  cattle  of  the  gentle- 
man, his  employer,  who  farmed  the  Hill.  Johnstone  was  an 
old  Forty -Second  man,  who  had  followed  Wellington  over  the 
larger  part  of  the  Peninsula  ;  but  though  he  had  witnessed  the 
storming  and  sack  of  St.  Sebastian,  and  a  great  many  other  bad 
things,  nothing  had  he  ever  seen  on  the  Peninsula,  or  anywhere 
else,  he  said,  half  so  mischievous  as  the  cattle-trap.  We,  of 
course,  kept  our  own  secret ;  and  as  we  all  returned  under  the 
cloud  of  night,  and  with  heavy  hearts  filled  up  our  excavation 
level  with  the  soil,  the  threatened  proclamation  was  never  is- 
sued. Johnstone,  however,  who  had  been  watching  my  mo- 
tions for  a  considerable  time  before,  and  whom,  as  he  was  a 
formidable  fellow,  very  unlike  any  of  the  other  foresters,  I  had 
been  sedulously  watching  in  turn, — had  no  hesitation  in  declar- 
ing that  I,  and  I  only,  could  be  the  designer  of  the  cattle-trap. 
I  had  acquainted  myself  in  books,  he  said,  with  the  mode  of 
entrapping  by  pitfalls  wild  beasts  in  the  forests  abroad ;  and 
my  trap  for  the  Colonel's  cattle  was,  he  was  certain,  a  result 
of  my  book-acquired  knowledge. 

I  was  one  day  lounging  in  front  of  my  mother's  dwelling, 
when  up  came  Johnstone  to  address  me.  As  the  evidence 
regarding  the  excavation  had  totally  broken  down,  I  was 
aware  of  no  special  offence  at  the  time  that  could  have  secur- 
ed for  me  such  a  piece  of  attention,  and  inferred  that  the  old 
soldier  was  laboring  under  some  mistake ;  but  Johnstone's 
address  soon  evinced  that  he  was  not  in  the  least  mistaken. 


142 

He  wished  to  be  acquainted  with  me,  he  said.  "  It  was  all 
not  .sense  for  us  to  be  bothering  one  another,  when  we  had  no 
cause  of  quarrel."  He  used  occasionally  to  eke  out  his  pen- 
sion, and  his  scanty  allowance  as  forester,  by  catching  a  basket 
of  fish  for  himself  from  off  the  rocks  of  the  Hill ;  and  he  had 
just  discovered  a  projecting  rock  at  the  foot  of  a  tall  precipice, 
which  would  prove,  he  was  sure,  one  of  the  best  fishing  plat- 
forms in  the  Frith.  But  then,  in  the  existing  state,  it  was 
wholly  inaccessible.  He  was,  however,  of  opinion  that  it  was 
possible  to  lay  it  open  by  carrying  a  path  adown  the  shelving 
face  of  the  precipice.  He  had  seen  Wellington  address  him- 
self to  quite  as  desperate-looking  matters  in  the  Peninsula ; 
and  were  I  but  to  assist  him,  he  was  sure,  he  said,  we  could 
construct  between  us  the  necessary  path.  The  undertaking 
was  one  wholly  according  to  my  own  heart ;  and  next  morn- 
ing Johnstone  and  I  were  hard  at  work  on  the  giddy  brow 
of  the  precipice.  It  was  topped  by  a  thick  bed  of  boulder 
clay,  itself — such  was  the  steepness  of  the  slope — almost  a  pre- 
cipice ;  but  a  series  of  deeply-cut  steps  led  us  easily  adown  the 
bed  of  clay  ;  and  then  a  sloping  shelf,  which,  with  much  labor, 
we  deepened  and  flattened,  conducted  us  not  unsafely  some 
five-and-twenty  or  thirty  feet  along  the  face  of  the  precipice 
proper.  A  second  series  of  steps,  painfully  scooped  out  of 
the  living  rock,  and  which  passed  within  a  few  yards  of  a 
range  of  herons'  nests  perched  on  a  hitherto  inaccessible  plat- 
form, brought  us  down  some  five-and-twenty  or  thirty  feet 
more ;  but  then  we  arrived  at  a  sheer  descent  of  about  twenty 
feet,  at  which  Johnstone  looked  rather  blank,  though,  on  my 
suggesting  a  ladder,  he  took  heart  again,  and  cutting  two  slim 
taper  trees  in  the  wood  above,  we  flung  them  over  the  preci- 
pice into  the  sea ;  and  then  fishing  them  up  with  a  world  of 
toil  and  trouble,  we  squared  and  bore  them  upwards,  and,  cut 
ting  tenons  for  them  in  the  hard  gneiss,  we  placed  them  against 
the  rock  front,  and  nailed  over  them  a  line  of  steps.  The 
precipice  beneath  sloped  easily  on  to  the  fishing  rock,  and  so  a 
few  steps  more  completed  our  path.  1  never  saw  a  man  more 
delighted  than  Johnstone.     As  being  lighter  and  more  active 


OK,    THE   STORY   OF   MY   EDUCATION.  143 

than  he, — for,  though  not  greatly  advanced  in  life,  he  was  con- 
siderably debilitated  by  severe  wounds, — I  had  to  take  some 
of  the  more  perilous  parts  of  the  work  on  myself.  I  had  cut 
the  tenons  for  the  ladder  with  a  rope  round  my  waist,  and  had 
recovered  the  trees  flung  into  the  sea  by  some  adroit  swim- 
ming ;  and  the  old  soldier  became  thoroughly  impressed  with 
the  conviction  that  my  proper  sphere  was  the  army.  I  was 
already  five  feet  three,  he  said  ;  in  little  more  than  a  twelve- 
month I  should  be  five  feet  seven ;  and  were  I  then  but  to  en- 
list, and  to  keep  from  the  "  drop  drink," — a  thing  which  he 
never  could  do, — I  would,  he  was  certain,  rise  to  be  a  serjeant. 
In  brief,  such  were  the  terms  on  which  Johnstone  and  I  learn- 
ed to  live  ever  after,  that,  had  I  constructed  a  score  of  traps 
for  the  Colonel's  cattle,  I  believe  he  would  have  winked  at 
them  all.  Poor  fellow  !  he  got  into  difficulties  a  good  many 
years  after,  and,  on  the  accession  of  the  Whigs  to  power, 
mortgaged  his  pension,  and  emigrated  to  Canada.  Deeming 
the  terms  hard,  however,  as  he  well  might,  he  first  wrote  a 
letter  to  his  old  commander,  the  Duke  of  Wellington, — I  hold- 
ing the  pen  for  him, — in  which,  in  the  hope  that  their  strin- 
gency might  be  relaxed  in  his  behalf,  he  stated  both  his  ser- 
vices and  his  case.  And  promptly  did  the  Duke  reply,  in  an 
essentially  kind  holograph  epistle,  in  which,  after  stating  that 
he  had  no  influence  at  the  time  with  the  Ministers  of  the 
Crown,  and  no  means  of  getting  a  relaxation  of  their  terms 
in  behalf  of  any  one,  he  "  earnestly  recommended  William 
Johnstone,  first,  not  to  seek  a  provision  for  himself  in  Cana- 
da, unless  he  were  able-bodied,  and  fit  to  provide  for  himself 
in  circumstances  of  extreme  hardship  ;  and,  second,  on  no  ac- 
count to  sell  or  mortgage  his  pension."  But  the  advice  was 
not  taken  ; — Johnstone  did  emigrate  to  Canada,  and  did  mort- 
gage his  pension  ;  and  I  fear — though  I  failed  to  trace  his  at- 
ter-history — that  he  suffered  in  consequence. 


144  MT  SCHOOLS  AND  SCHOOLMASTERS 


CHAPTER    VIII. 


"Now,  surely,  thought  I,  there's  enou' 
To  fill  life's  dusty  way  ; 
And  who  will  miss  a  poet's  feet, 
Or  wonder  where  he  stray! 
So  to  the  woods  and  wastes  I'll  go, 
And  I  will  build  an  ozier  bower; 
And  sweetly  there  10  me  shall  flow 
The  meditative  hour." 

Henry  Kirkk  White. 

Finlay  was  away ;  my  friend  of  the  Doocot  Cave  was  away ; 
my  other  companions  were  all  scattered  abroad ;  my  mother, 
after  a  long  widowhood  of  more  than  eleven  years,  had  enter- 
ed into  a  second  marriage ;  and  I  found  myself  standing  face 
to  face  with  a  life  of  labor  and  restraint.  The  prospect  ap- 
peared dreary  in  the  extreme.  The  necessity  of  ever  toiling 
from  morning  to  night,  and  from  one  week's  end  to  another, 
and  lJLI  for  a  little  coarse  food  and  homely  raiment,  seemed  to 
be  a  dire  one  ;  and  fain  would  I  have  avoided  it.  But  there 
was  no  escape,  and  so  I  determined  on  being  a  mason.  I  re- 
membered my  Cousin  George's  long  winter  holidays,  and  how 
delightfully  he  employed  them  ;  and,  by  making  choice  of 
Cousin  George's  profession,  I  trusted  to  find,  like  him,  large 
compensation,  in  the  amusements  of  one  half  the  year,  for  the 
toils  of  the  other  half.  Labor  shall  not  wield  over  me,  I  said, 
a  rod  entirely  black,  but  a  rod  like  one  of  Jacob's  peeled 
wands,  chequered  white  and  black  alternately. 


OR,    THE    STORY  OF  MY  EDUCATION.  145 

I,  however,  did  look,  even  at  this  time,  notwithstanding  the 
antecedents  of  a  sadly  mis-spent  boyhood,  to  something  higher 
than  mere  amusement ;  and,  daring  to  believe  that  literature, 
and,  mayhap,  natural  science,  were,  after  all,  my  proper  voca- 
tions, I  resolved  that  much  of  my  leisure  time  should  be  given 
to  careful  observation,  and  the  study  of  our  best  English  au- 
thors. Both  my  uncles,  especially  James,  were  sorely  vexed 
by  my  determination  to  be  a  mason  ;  they  had  expected  to  see 
me  rising  in  some  one  of  the  learned  professions ;  yet  here  was 
I  going  to  be  a  mere  operative  mechanic,  like  one  of  them- 
selves !  I  spent  with  them  a  serious  hour,  in  which  they 
urged  that,  instead  of  entering  as  a  mason's  apprentice,  1 
should  devote  myself  anew  to  my  education.  Though  the 
labor  of  their  hands  formed  their  only  wealth,  they  would  as- 
sist me,  they  said,  in  getting  through  college ;  nay,  if  I  pre- 
ferred it,  I  might  meanwhile  come  and  live  with  them  ;  all  they 
asked  in  return  of  me  was,  that  I  should  give  myself  as  sedu- 
lously to  my  lessons  as,  in  the  event  of  my  becoming  a  mason, 
I  would  have  to  give  myself  to  my  trade.  I  demurred.  The 
lads  of  my  acquaintance  who  were  preparing  for  college  had 
an  eye,  I  said,  to  some  profession ;  they  were  qualifying  them- 
selves to  be  lawyers,  or  medical  men,  or,  in  much  larger  part, 
were  studying  for  the  Church ;  whereas  I  had  no  wish  and  no 
peculiar  fitness  to  be  either  lawyer  or  doctor  ;  and  as  for  the 
Church,  that  was  too  serious  a  direction  to  look  in  for  one's 
bread,  unless  one  could  honestly  regard  one's  self  as  called  to 
the  Church's  proper  work  ;  and  I  could  not.  There,  said  my 
uncles,  you  are  perfectly  right :  better  be  a  poor  mason, — bet- 
ter be  anything  honest,  however  humble, — than  an  uncalled 
minister.  How  very  strong  the  hold  taken  of  the  mind  in 
some  cases  by  hereditary  convictions  of  which  the  ordinary 
conduct  shows  little  apparent  trace  !  I  had  for  the  last  few 
years  been  a  wild  boy, — not  without  my  share  of  respect  for 
Donald  Roy's  religion,  but  possessed  of  none  of  Donald's  se- 
riousness ;  and  yet  here  was  his  belief  in  this  special  matter 
lying  so  strongly  entrenched  in  the  recesses  of  my  mind,  that 
no  consideration  whatever  could  have  induced  me  to  outrage 


146 

it  by  obtruding  my  unworthiness  on  the  Church.  Though, 
mayhap,  overstrained  in  many  of  its  older  forms,  I  fain  wish 
the  conviction,  in  at  least  some  of  its  better  modifications, 
were  more  general  now.  It  might  be  well  for  all  the  Protest- 
ant Churches  practically  to  hold,  with  Uncles  James  and  Sandy, 
that  true  ministers  cannot  be  manufactured  out  of  ordinary 
men — men  ordinary  in  talent  and  character — in  a  given  num- 
ber of  years,  and  then  passed  by  the  imposition  of  hands  into 
the  sacred  office ;  but  that,  on  the  contrary,  ministers,  when 
real,  are  all  special  creations  of  the  grace  of  God.  I  may 
add,  that  in  a  belief  of  this  kind,  deeply  implanted  in  the  pop- 
ular mind  of  Scotland,  the  strength  of  our  recent  Church  con- 
troversy mainly  lay. 

Slowly  and  unwillingly  my  uncles  at  length  consented  that  I 
should  make  trial  of  a  life  of  manual  labor.  The  husband  of 
one  of  my  maternal  aunts  was  a  mason,  who,  contracting  for  jobs 
on  a  small  scale,  usually  kept  an  apprentice  or  two,  and  employ- 
ed a  few  journeymen.  With  him  I  agreed  to  serve  for  the  term 
of  three  years  ;  and,  getting  a  suit  of  strong  moleskin  clothes, 
and  a  pair  of  heavy  hob-nailed  shoes,  I  waited  only  for  the 
breaking  up  of  the  winter  frosts,  to  begin  work  in  the  Cro- 
marty quarries, — jobbing  masters  in  the  north  of  Scotland  us- 
ually combining  the  profession  of  the  quarrier  with  that  of  the 
mason.  In  the  beautiful  poetic  fragment  from  which  I  have 
chosen  my  motto,  poor  Kirk  White  fondly  indulges  in  the 
dream  of  a  hermit  life, — quiet,  meditative,  solitary,  spent  far 
away  in  deep  woods,  or  amid  wide-spread  wastes,  where  the 
very  sounds  that  arose  would  be  but  the  faint  echoes  of  a  lone- 
liness in  which  man  was  not, — a  "  voice  of  the  desert,  never 
dumb."  The  dream  is  that  of  a  certain  brief  period  of  life  be- 
tween boyhood  and  comparatively  mature  youth  ;  and  we  find 
more  traces  of  it  in  the  poetry  of  Kirke  White  than  in  that  of 
almost  any  other  poet ;  simply  because  he  wrote  at  the  age  in 
which  it  is  natural  to  indulge  in  it,  and  because,  being  less  an 
imitator  and  more  an  original  than  most  juvenile  poets,  he 
gave  it  as  a  portion  of  the  internal  experience  from  which  he 
drew      But  it  is  a  dream  not  restricted  to  young  poets  ;  the 


OR,    THE   STORY   OF   MY   EDUCATION.  147 

ignorant,  half-grown  lad,  who  learns  for  the  first  time  "  about 
the  great  rich  gentleman  who  advertises  for  a  hermit,"  and 
wishes  that  he  had  but  the  necessary  qualifications  of  beard  to 
offer  himself  as  a  candidate,  indulges  in  it  also ;  and  I,  too,  in 
this  transition  stage,  cherished  it  with  all  the  strength  of  a 
passion.  It  seems  to  spring  out  of  a  latent  timidity  in  the  yet 
undeveloped  mind,  that  shrinks  from  grappling  with  the  stern 
realities  of  life,  amid  the  crowd  and  press  of  a  busy  world, 
and  o'ershaded  by  the  formidable  competition  of  men  already 
practised  in  the  struggle.  I  have  still  before  me  the  picture 
of  the  "  lodge  in  some  vast  wilderness,"  to  which  I  could  have 
fain  retired,  to  lead  all  alone  a  life  quieter,  but  quite  as  wild, 
as  my  Marcus'  Cave  one ;  and  the  snugness  and  comfort  of  the 
humble  interior  of  my  hermitage,  during  some  boisterous  night 
of  winter,  when  the  gusty  wind  would  be  howling  around  the 
roof,  and  the  rain  beating  on  the  casement,  but  when  in  the 
calm  within,  the  cheerful  flame  would  roar  in  the  chimney, 
and  glance  bright  on  raftei  and  wall,  still  impress  me  as  if  the 
recollection  was  in  reality  that  of  a  scene  witnessed,  not  of  a 
mere  vision  conjured  up  by  the  fancy.  But  it  was  all  the  idle 
dream  of  a  truant  lad,  who  would  fain  now,  as  on  former  oc- 
casions, have  avoided  going  to  school, — that  best  and  noblest 
of  all  schools,  save  the  Christian  one,  in  which  honest  Labor 
is  the  teacher, — in  which  the  ability  of  being  useful  is  impart- 
ed, and  the  spirit  of  independence  communicated,  and  the  hab- 
it of  persevering  effort  acquired ;  and  which  is  more  moral 
than  the  schools  in  which  only  philosophy  is  taught,  and  great- 
ly more  happy  than  the  schools  which  profess  to  teach  only  the 
art  of  enjoyment.  Noble,  upright,  self-relying  Toil !  Who 
that  knows  thy  solid  worth  and  value  would  be  ashamed  of 
thy  hard  hands,  and  thy  soiled  vestments,  and  thy  obscure 
tasks, — thy  humble  cottage,  and  hard  couch,  and  homely  fare  ! 
Save  for  thee  and  thy  lessons,  man  in  society  would  everywhere 
sink  into  a  sad  compound  of  the  fiend  and  the  wild  beast ;  and 
this  fallen  world  would  be  as  certainly  a  moral  as  a  natural  wil- 
derness. But  I  little  thought  of  the  excellence  of  thy  character 
and  of  thy  teachings,  wher,  with  a  heavy  heart,  I  set  out  about 


148 

this  time,  on  a  morning  of  early  spring,  to  take  my  first  lesson 
from  thee  in  a  sandstone  quarry. 

I  have  elsewhere  recorded  the  history  of  my  few  first  days 
of  toil ;  but  it  is  possible  for  two  histories  of  the  same  period 
and  ind.vidual  to  be  at  once  true  to  fact,  and  unlike  each  other 
in  the  scenes  which  they  describe  and  the  events  which  they 
record.  The  quarry  in  which  I  commenced  my  life  of  labor 
was,  as  I  have  said,  a  sandstone  one,  and  exhibited  in  the  sec- 
tion of  the  furze-covered  bank  which  it  presented,  a  bar  of 
deep-red  stone  beneath,  and  a  bar  of  pale-red  clay  above. 
Both  deposits  belonged  to  formations  equally  known  at  the 
time  to  the  geologist.'  The  deep-red  stone  formed  part  of  an 
upper  member  of  the  Lower  Old  Red  Sandstone ;  the  pale- 
red  clay,  which  was  much  roughened  by  rounded  pebbles,  and 
much  cracked  and  fissured  by  the  recent  frosts,  was  a  bed  of 
the  boulder  clay.  Save  for  the  wholesome  restraint  that  con- 
fined me  for  day  after  day  to  the  spot,  I  would  perhaps  have 
paid  little  attention  to  either.  Mineralogy  in  its  first  rudi- 
ments had  early  awakened  my  curiosity,  just  as  it  never  fails 
to  awaken,  with  its  gems,  and  its  metals,  and  its  hard  glitter- 
ing rocks,  of  which  tools  may  be  made,  the  curiosity  of  infant 
tribes  and  nations.  But  in  unsightly  masses  of  mechanical 
origin,  whether  sandstone  or  clay,  I  could  take  no  interest ; 
just  as  infant  societies  take  no  interest  in  such  masses,  and  so 
fail  to  know  anything  of  geology ;  and  it  was  not  until  I  had 
learned  to  detect  among  the  ancient  sandstone  strata  of  this 
quarry  exactly  the  same  phenomena  as  those  which  I  used  to 
"witness  in  my  walks  with  Uncle  Sandy  in  the  ebb,  that  I  was 
fairly  excited  to  examine  and  inquire.  It  was  the  necessity 
■which  made  me  a  quarrier  that  taught  me  to  be  a  geologist. 
Further,  I  soon  found  that  there  was  much  to  be  enjoyed  in  a 
life  of  labor.  A  taste  for  the  beauties  of  natural  scenery  is  of 
itself  a  never-failing  spring  of  delight ;  and  there  was  scarce 
a  day  in  which  I  wrought  in  the  open  air,  during  this  period, 
in  which  I  did  not  experience  its  soothing  and  exhilarating  in- 
fluence. Well  has  it  been  said  by  the  poet  Keats,  that  "  a 
thing  of  beauty  is  a  joy  forever."    I  owed  much  to  the  upper 


149 

reaches  of  Cromarty  Frith,  as  seen,  when  we  sat  down  to 
our  mid -day  meal,  from  the  gorge  of  the  quarry,  with  their 
numerous  rippling  currents,  that  in  the  calm  resembled  stream- 
lets winding  through  a  meadow,  and  their  distant  gray  pro- 
montories tipped  with  villages  that  brightened  in  the  sunshine  ; 
while,  pale  in  the  background,  the  mighty  hills,  still  streaked 
with  snow,  rose  high  over  bay  and  promontory,  and  gave  dig- 
nity and  power  to  the  scene. 

Still,  however,  with  all  my  enjoyments,  I  had  to  suffer  some 
of  the  evils  of  excessive  toil.  Though  now  seventeen,  I  was 
still  seven  inches  short  of  my  ultimate  stature ;  and  my  frame, 
cast  more  at  the  time  in  the  mould  of  my  mother  than  in  that 
of  the  robust  sailor,  whose  "  back,"  according  to  the  descrip- 
tion of  one  of  his  comrades,  "  no  one  had  ever  put  to  the 
ground,"  was  slim  and  loosely  knit ;  and  I  used  to  suffer  much 
from  wandering  pains  in  the  joints,  and  an  oppressive  feeling 
about  the  chest,  as  if  crushed  by  some  great  weight.  I  be- 
came subject,  too,  to  frequent  fits  of  extreme  depression  of 
spirits,  which  took  almost  the  form  of  a  walking  sleep, — re- 
sults, I  believe,  of  excessive  fatigue, — and  during  which  my  ab- 
sence of  mind  was  so  extreme,  that  I  lacked  the  ability  of 
protecting  myself  against  accident,  in  cases  the  most  simple 
and  ordinary.  Besides  other  injuries,  I  lost  at  different  times 
during  the  first  few  months  of  my  apprenticeship,  when  in 
these  fits  of  partial  somnambulism,  no  fewer  than  seven  of  my 
finger-nails.  But  as  I  gathered  strength,  my  spirits  became 
more  equable ;  and  not  until  many  years  after,  when  my  health 
failed  for  a  time  under  over-exertion  of  another  kind,  had  I 
any  renewed  experience  of  the  fits  of  walking  sleep. 

My  master,  an  elderly  man  at  the  time, — for,  as  he  used  not 
unfrequently  to  tell  his  apprentices,  he  had  been  born  on  the 
same  day  and  year  as  George  the  Fourth,  and  so  we  could 
celebrate,  if  we  pleased,  both  holidays  together, — was  a  per- 
son of  plodding,  persevering  industry,  who  wrought  rather 
longer  hours  than  was  quite  agreeable  to  one  who  wished  to 
have  some  time  to  himself ;  but  he  was,  in  the  main,  a  good 
master.     As  a  builder,  he  made  conscience  of  every  stone  ho 


150 

laid.  It  was  remarked  in  the  place,  that  the  walls  built  by 
Uncle  David  never  bulged  or  fell ;  and  no  apprentice  or  jour- 
neyman of  his  was  permitted,  on  any  plea,  to  make  "  slight 
work."  Though  by  no  means  a  bold  or  daring  man,  he  was, 
from  sheer  abstraction,  when  engrossed  in  his  employment, 
more  thoroughly  insensible  to  personal  danger  than  almost 
any  other  individual  I  ever  knew.  On  one  occasion,  when  an 
overloaded  boat,  in  which  he  was  carrying  stones  from  the 
quarry  to  the  neighboring  town,  was  overtaken  by  a  series  of 
rippling  seas,  and  suddenly  sank,  leaving  him  standing  on  one 
of  the  thwarts  submerged  to  the  throat,  he  merely  said  to  his 
partner,  on  seeing  his  favorite  snuff-mull  go  floating  past, 
"  Od,  Andro  man,  just  rax  out  your  han'  and  tak  in  my  snuff- 
box." On  another,  when  a  huge  mass  of  the  boulder  clay 
came  toppling  down  upon  us  in  the  quarry  with  such  momen- 
tum, that  it  bent  a  massive  iron  lever  like  a  bow,  and  crushed 
into  minute  fragments  a  strong  wheelbarrow,  Uncle  David, 
who,  older  and  less  active  than  any  of  the  others,  had  been 
entangled  in  the  formidable  debris,  relieved  all  our  minds  by 
remarking,  as  we  rushed  back,  expecting  to  find  him  crushed 
as  flat  as  a  botanical  preparation,  "  Od,  I  draid,  Andro  man, 
we  have  lost  our  good  barrow."  He  was  at  first  of  opinion 
that  I  would  do  him  little  credit  as  a  workman  ;  in  my  ab- 
sent fits  I  was  well-nigh  as  impervious  to  instruction  as  he  him- 
self was  insensible  to  danger ;  and  I  labored  under  the  further 
disadvantage  of  knowing  a  little,  as  an  amateur,  of  both  hew- 
ing and  building,  from  the  circumstance,  that  when  the  under- 
takings of  my  schoolboy  days  involved,  as  they  sometimes  did, 
the  erection  of  a  house,  I  used  always  to  be  selected  as  the 
mason  of  the  party.  And  all  that  I  had  learned  on  these  oc- 
casions I  had  now  to  unlearn.  In  the  course  of  a  few  months, 
however,  I  did  unlearn  it  all ;  and  then,  acquiring  in  less  than 
a  fortnight  a  very  considerable  mastery  over  the  mallet, — for 
mine  was  one  of  the  n:>t  very  unfrequent  cases  in  which  the 
mechanical  knack  seems,  after  many  an  abortive  attempt,  to 
be  oaught  up  at  once, — I  astonished  Uncle  David  one  morn- 
ing by  setting  myself  to  compete  with  him,  and  by  hewing 


151 

nearly  two  feet  cf  pavement  for  his  one.  And  on  this  occa- 
sion my  aunt,  his  wife,  who  had  been  no  stranger  to  his  pre- 
vious complaints,  was  informed  that  her  "  stupid  nephew"  was 
to  turn  out  "  a  grand  workman  after  all." 

A  life  of  toil  has,  however,  its  peculiar  temptations.  When 
overwrought,  and  in  my  depressed  moods,  I  learned  to  regard 
the  ardent  spirits  of  the  dram-shop  as  high  luxuries  ;  they 
gave  lightness  and  energy  to  both  body  and  mind,  and  substi- 
tuted for  a  state  of  dulness  and  gloom,  one  of  exhilaration 
and  enjoyment.  Usquebhae  was  simply  happiness  doled  out 
by  the  glass,  and  sold  by  the  gill.  The  drinking  usages  of  the 
profession  in  which  I  labored  were  at  this  time  many  ;  when 
a  foundation  was  laid,  the  workmen  were  treated  to  drink  ; 
they  were  treated  to  drink  when  the  walls  were  levelled  for 
laying  the  joists ;  they  were  treated  to  drink  when  the  build- 
ing was  finished ;  they  were  treated  to  drink  when  an  appren- 
tice joined  the  squad  ;  treated  to  drink  when  his  "  apron  was 
washed  ;"  treated  to  drink  when  his  "  time  was  out  ;"  and  oc- 
casionally they  learned  to  treat  one  another  to  drink.  In  lay- 
ing down  the  foundation-stone  of  one  of  the  larger  houses 
built  this  year  by  Uncle  David  and  his  partner,  the  workmen 
had  a  royal  "  founding-pint,"  and  two  whole  glasses  of  the 
whiskey  came  to  my  share.  A  full-grown  man  would  not  have 
deemed  a  gill  of  usquebhae  an  overdose,  but  it  was  consider- 
ably too  much  for  me  ;  and  when  the  party  broke  up,  and  I 
got  home  to  my  books,  I  found,  as  I  opened  the  pages  of  a 
favorite  author,  the  letters  dancing  before  my  eyes,  and  that 
I  could  no  longer  master  the  sense.  I  have  the  volume  at  pres- 
ent before  me, — a  small  edition  of  the  Essays  of  Bacon,  a 
good  deal  worn  at  the  corners  by  the  friction  of  the  pocket  ; 
for  of  Bacon  I  never  tired.  The  condition  into  which  I  had 
brought  myself  was,  I  felt,  one  of  degradation.  I  had  sunk, 
Dy  my  own  act,  fur  the  time,  to  a  lower  level  of  intelligence 
than  that  on  which  it  was  my  privilege  to  be  placed  ;  and 
though  the  state  could  have  been  no  very  favorable  one  foi 
forming  a  resolution,  I  in  that  hour  determined  that  I  should 
never  again  sacrifice  my  capacity  for  intellectual  enjovr^ent  to 


152  MY  SCHOOLS   AND  SCHOOLMASTERS; 

a  drinking  usage  ;  and,  with  God's  help,  I  was  enabled  to  hold 
by  the  determination.  Though  never  a  strict  abstainer,  I 
have  wrought  as  an  operative  mason  for  whole  twelvemonths 
together,  in  which  I  did  not  consume  half-a-dozen  glasses  of 
ardent  spirits,  or  partake  of  half-a-dozen  draughts  of  ferment- 
ed  liquor.  But  I  do  see,  in  looking  back  on  this  my  first  year 
of  labor,  a  dangerous  point,  at  which,  in  the  attempt  to  escape 
from  the  sense  of  depression  and  fatigue,  the  craving  appetite 
of  the  confirmed  tippler  might  have  been  formed. 

The  ordinary,  long-wrought  quarries  of  my  native  town  have 
been  opened  in  the  old  coast-line  along  the  southern  shores  of 
the  Cromarty  Frith,  and  they  contain  no  organisms.  The 
beds  occasionally  display  their  water-rippled  surfaces,  and  oc- 
casionally their  areas  of  ancient  desiccation,  in  which  the  poly- 
gonal partings  still  remain  as  when  they  had  cracked  in  the 
drying,  untold  ages  before.  But  the  rock  contains  neither  fish 
nor  shell ;  and  the  mere  mechanical  processes  of  which  it  gave 
evidence,  though  they  served  to  raise  strange  questions  in  my 
mind,  failed  to  interest  me  so  deeply  as  the  wonderful  organ- 
isms of  other  creations  would  have  done.  We  soon  quitted 
these  quarries,  however,  as  they  proved  more  than  usually  dif- 
ficult in  the  working  at  this  time,  for  a  quarry  situated  on  the 
northern  shore  of  the  Moray  Frith,  which  had  been  recently 
opened  in  an  inferior  member  of  the  Lower  Old  Red  Sand- 
stone, and  wThich,  as  I  subsequently  ascertained,  does  in  some 
of  its  beds  contain  fossils.  It  was,  however,  not  to  the  quarry 
itself  that  my  first-found  organisms  belonged.  There  lies  in 
the  Frith  beyond,  an  outlier  of  the  Lias,  which,  like  the  Mar- 
cus' Cave  one  referred  to  in  a  preceding  chapter,  strews  the 
beach  with  its  fragments  after  every  storm  from  the  sea  ;  and 
n  a  nodular  mass  of  blueish-gray  limestone  derived  from  this 
ubaqueous  bed  I  laid  open  my  first-found  ammonite.  It  was 
a  beautiful  specimen,  graceful  in  its  curves  as  those  of  the 
Ionic  volute,  and  greatly  more  delicate  in  its  sculpturing  ;  and 
its  bright  cream-colored  tint,  dimly  burnished  by  the  pris- 
matic hues  of  the  original  pearl,  contrasted  exquisitely  with  the 
4ark  gray  )f  the  matrix  which  enclosed  it.  I  broke  open  many 


OR,   THE   STORY  OF  MY  EDUCATION.  153 

a  similar  nodule  during  our  stay  at  this  delightful  quarry,  and 
there  were  few  of  them  in  which  I  did  not  detect  some  or- 
ganism of  the  ancient  world, — scales  of  fishes,  groupes  of  shells, 
bits  of  decayed  wood,  and  fragments  of  fern.  At  the  dinner 
hour  I  used  to  show  my  new-found  specimens  to  the  work- 
men ;  but  though  they  always  took  the  trouble  of  looking  at 
them,  and  wondered  at  times  how  the  shells  and  plants  had 
"  got  into  the  stone,"  they  seemed  to  regard  them  as  a  sort  of 

atural  toys,  which  a  mere  lad  might  amuse  himself  in  look- 
rig  after,  but  which  were  rather  below  the  notice  of  grown-up 
people  like  themselves.  One  workman,  however,  informed 
me,  that  things  of  a  kind  I  had  not  yet  found, — genuine  thun- 
derbolts,— which  in  his  father's  times  were  much  sought  after 
for  the  cure  of  bewitched  cattle, — were  to  be  found  in  tolerable 
abundance  on  a  reach  of  the  beach  about  two  miles  further  to 
the  west ;  and  as,  on  quitting  the  quarry  for  the  piece  of  work 
on  which  we  were  to  be  next  engaged,  Uncle  David  gave  us 
all  a  half-holiday,  I  made  use  of  it  in  visiting  the  tract  of 
shore  indicated  by  the  workman.  And  there,  leaning  against 
the  granite  gneiss  and  hornblend  slate  of  the  Hill  of  Eathie, 
I  found  a  Liasic  deposit,  amazingly  rich  in  its  organisms, — 
not  buried  under  the  waves,  as  at  Marcus'  shore,  or  as  opposite 
our  new  quarry,  but  at  one  part  underlying  a  little  grass-cover 
ed  plain,  and  at  another  exposed  for  several  hundred  yards  to- 
gether along  the  shore.  Never  yet  did  embryo-geologist  break 
ground  on  a  more  promising  field  ;  and  memorable  in  my  ex- 
istence was  this  first  of  the  many  happy  evenings  that  I  have 
spent  in  exploring  it. 

The  Hill  of  Eathie,  like  the  Cromarty  Sutors,  belongs,  as  I 
have  already  had  occasion  to  mention,  to  what  De  Beaumont 
/rould  term,  the  Ben  Nevis  system  of  hills, — that  latest  of  our 

Scottish  mountain  systems  which,  running  from  south-west  to 
north-east,  in  the  line  of  the  great  Caledonian  valley,  and  in 
that  of  the  valleys  of  the  Nairn,  Findhorn.  and  Spey,  uptilted 
in  its  course,  when  it  arose,  the  Oolites  of  Sutherland,  and  the 
Lias  of  Cromarty  and  Ross.  The  deposit  which  the  Hill  of 
Eathie  disturbed  is  exclusively  a  Liasic  one.     The  upturned 


154 

base  of  the  formation  rests  immediately  against  the  Hill ;  and 
we  may  trace  the  edges  of  the  various  overlaying  beds  for  seve 
ral  hundred  feet  outwards,  until,  apparently  near  the  top  of 
the  deposit,  we  lose  them  in  the  sea.  The  various  beds — all 
save  the  lowest,  which  consists  of  a  blue  adhesive  clay — are 
composed  of  a  dark  shale,  consisting  of  easily-separable  laminae, 
thin  as  sheets  of  pasteboard  ;  and  they  are  curiously  divided 
from  each  other  by  bands  of  fossil iferous  limestone  of  but  from 
one  to  two  feet  thick.  These  Liasic  beds,  with  their  separating 
bands,  are  a  sort  of  boarded  books ;  for  as  a  series  of  volumes 
reclining  against  a  granite  pedestal  in  the  geological  library  of 
nature,  I  used  to  find  pleasure  in  regarding  them.  The  lime- 
stone bands,  elaborately  marbled  with  lignite,  icthyolite,  and 
shell,  form  the  stiff  boarding  ;  the  pasteboard-like  laminse  be- 
tween,— tens  and  hundreds  of  thousands  in  number  in  even 
the  slimmer  volumes, — compose  the  closely-written  leaves.  I 
say  closely  written  ;  for  never  yet  did  signs  or  characters  lie 
closer  on  page  or  scroll  than  do  the  organisms  of  the  Lias  on 
the  surface  of  these  leaf-like  laminae.  I  can  scarce  hope  to 
communicate  to  the  reader,  after  the  lapse  of  so  many  years, 
an  adequate  idea  of  the  feeling  of  wonder  which  the  marvels  of 
this  deposit  excited  in  my  mind,  wholly  new  as  they  were  to  me 
at  the  time.  Even  the  fairy  lore  of  my  first-formed  library, — 
that  of  the  birchen  box, — had  impressed  me  less.  The  general 
tone  of  the  coloring  of  these  written  leaves,  though  dimmed 
by  the  action  of  untold  centuries,  is  still  very  striking.  The 
ground  is  invariably  of  a  deep  natural  gray,  verging  on  black  ; 
while  the  flattened  organisms,  which  present  about  the  same 
degree  of  relief  as  one  sees  in  the  figures  of  an  embossed  card, 
contrast  with  it  in  tints  that  vary  from  opaque  to  silvery  white, 
and  from  pale  yellow  to  an  umbry  or  chestnut  brown.  Groups 
of  ammonites  appear  as  if  drawn  in  white  chalk  ;  clusters  of  a 
minute  undescribed  bivalve  are  still  plated  with  thin  films  of 
the  silvery  nacre ;  the  my  tilaceae  usually  bear  a  warm  tint  of 
yellowish  brown,  and  must  have  been  brilliant  shells  in  their 
day  ;  gryphites  and  oysters  are  always  of  a  dark  gray,  and 
plagiostomae  ordinarily  of  a  blueish  or  neutral  tint.     On  some 


OR,    THE   STORY   OF   MY   EDUCATION".  155 

of  the  leaves  curious  pieces  of  incident  seem  recorded.  We  see 
fleets  of  minute  terebratulse,  that  appear  to  have  been  covered 
up  by  some  sudden  deposit  from  above,  when  riding  at  their 
anchors  ;  and  whole  argosies  of  ammonites,  that  seem  to  have 
been  wrecked  at  once  by  some  untoward  accident,  and  sent 
crushed  and  dead  to  the  bottom.  Assemblages  of  bright  black 
plates,  that  shine  like  pieces  of  Japan  work,  with  numerous  pa- 
rallelogrammical  scales  bristling  with  nail-like  points,  indicate 
where  some  armed  fish  of  the  old  ganoid  order  lay  down  and 
died  ;  and  groupes  of  belemnites,  that  lie  like  heaps  of  boarding 
pikes  thrown  carelessly  on  a  vessel's  deck  on  the  surrender  of 
the  crew,  tell  where  sculls  of  cuttle-fishes  of  the  ancient  type 
had  ceased  to  trouble  the  waters.  I  need  scarce  add,  that  these 
spear-like  belemnites  formed  the  supposed  thunderbolts  of  the 
deposit.  Lying  athwart  some  of  the  pages  thus  strangely  in- 
scribed, we  occasionally  find,  like  the  dark  hawthorn  leaf  in 
Bewick's  well-known  vignette,  slim-shaped  leaves  colored  in 
deep  umber  ;  and  branches  of  extinct  pines,  and  fragments  of 
strangely  fashioned  ferns,  form  their  more  ordinary  garnishing. 
Page  after  page,  for  tens  and  hundreds  of  feet  together,  repeat 
the  same  wonderful  story.  The  great  Alexandrian  library, 
with  its  tomes  of  ancient  literature,  the  accumulation  of  long 
ages,  was  but  a  meagre  collection, — not  less  puny  in  bulk  than 
recent  in  date, — compared  with  this  marvellous  library  of  the 
Scotch  Lias. 

Who,  after  once  spending  even  a  few  hours  in  such  a  school, 
could  avoid  being  a  geologist  1  I  had  formerly  found  much 
pleasure  among  rocks  and  in  caves ;  but  it  was  the  wonders  of 
the  Eathie  Lias  that  first  gave  direction  and  aim  to  my  curi- 
osity. From  being  a  mere  child,  that  had  sought  amusement 
in  looking  over  the  pictures  of  the  stony  volume  of  nature,  I 
henceforth  became  a  sober  student,  desirous  of  reading  and 
knowing  it  as  a  book.  The  extreme  beauty,  however,  of  the 
Liasic  fossils  made  me  pass  over  at  this  time,  as  of  little  in- 
terest, a  discovery  which,  if  duly  followed  up,  would  have  prob- 
ably landed  me  in  full  in  the  midst  of  the  Old  Red  Sandstone 
ichthyolites  fully  ten  years  ere  I  learned  to  know  them.     In 


156  MY   SCHOOLS   AND   SCHOOLMASTERS; 

forming  a  temporary  harbor,  at  which  we  boated  the  stones 
we  had  been  quarrying,  I  struck  my  pick  into  a  slaty  sand- 
stone bed,  thickly  mottled  in  the  layers  by  carbonaceous  mark- 
ings. They  consisted,  I  saw,  of  thin  rectilinear  stems  or  leaves, 
much  broken,  and  in  a  bad  state  of  keeping,  that  at  once  sug- 
gested to  me  layers  of  comminuted  Zostera  marina,  such  as  I 
had  often  seen  on  the  Cromarty  beach  thrown  up  from  the 
sub-marine  meadows  of  the  Frith  beyond.  But  then,  with 
nagnificent  ammonites  and  belemnites,  and  large  well-marked 
ignites,  to  be  had  in  abundance  at  Eathie  just  for  the  laying 
open  and  the  picking  up,  how  could  I  think  of  giving  myself 
to  disinter  what  seemed  to  be  mere  broken  fragments  of  Zos- 
tera ?  Within,  however,  a  few  feet  of  these  carbonaceous 
markings  there  occurred  one  of  those  platforms  of  violent 
death  for  which  the  Old  Red  Sandstone  is  so  remarkable, — a 
platform  strewed  over  with  fossil  remains  of  the  first-born  ga- 
noids of  creation,  many  of  which  still  bore  in  their  contorted 
outlines  evidence  of  sudden  dissolution  and  the  dying  pang. 

During  the  winter  of  this  year, — for  winter  at  length  came, 
and,  my  labors  over,  three  happy  months  were  all  my  own, 
— I  had  an  opportunity  of  seeing,  deep  in  a  wild  Highland 
glen,  the  remains  of  one  of  our  old  Scotch  forests  of  the  na- 
tive pine.  My  cousin  George,  finding  his  pretty  Highland 
cottage  on  the  birch-covered  Tomhan  situated  too  far  from  his 
ordinary  scenes  of  employment,  had  removed  to  Cromarty ; 
and  when  his  work  had  this  year  come  to  a  close  for  the  sea- 
son, he  made  use  of  his  first  leisure  in  visiting  his  father-in- 
law,  an  aged  shepherd  who  resided  in  the  upper  recesses  cf 
Slrathcarron.  He  had  invited  me  to  accompany  him ;  and  cf 
the  invitation  I  gladly  availed  myself.  We  struck  across  the 
tract  of  wild  hills  which  intervenes  between  the  Cromarty  and 
Dornoch  Friths,  a  few  miles  to  the  west  of  the  village  of  In- 
vergordon ;  and,  after  spending  several  hours  in  toiling  across 
dreary  moors,  unopened  at  the  time  by  any  public  road,  we 
took  our  noon-day  refreshment  in  an  uninhabited  valley,  among 
broken  cottage-walls,  with  a  few  furrowed  patches  stretching 
out  around  us,  green  amid  the  waste.    One  of  the  best  swords- 


157 

men  in  Ross  had  once  lived  there ;  but  both  he  and  his  race 
had  been  lost  to  Scotland  in  consequence  of  the  compelled  emi- 
gration so  common  in  the  Highlands  during  the  last  two  ages  ; 
and  Cousin  George  came  strongly  out  against  the  lairds.  The 
chill  winter  night  had  fallen  on  the  dark  hills  and  alder-skirted 
river  of  Strathcarron,  as,  turning  from  off  the  road  that  winds 
along  the  Kyle  of  Dornoch,  we  entered  its  bleak  gorge ;  and 
as  the  shepherd's  dwelling  lay  high  np  the  valley,  where  the 
lofty  sides  approach  so  near,  and  rise  so  abruptly,  that  for  the 
whole  winter  quarter  the  sun  never  falls  on  the  stream  below, 
we  had  still  some  ten  or  twelve  miles  of  broken  road  before  us. 
The  moon,  in  her  first  quarter,  hung  on  the  edge  of  the  hills, 
dimly  revealing  their  rough  outline ;  while  in  a  recess  of  the 
stream,  far  beneath,  we  could  see  the  torch  of  some  adventur- 
ous fisher,  now  gleaming  red  on  rock  and  water,  now  suddenly 
disappearing,  eclipsed  by  the  overhanging  brushwood.  It  was 
late  ere  we  reached  the  shepherd's  cottage, — a  dark-raftered, 
dimly-lighted  erection  of  turf  and  stone.  The  weather  for 
several  weeks  before  had  been  rainy  and  close,  and  the  flocks 
of  the  inmate  had  been  thinned  by  the  common  scourge  of  the 
sheep-farmer  at  such  seasons  on  damp,  boggy  farms.  The 
beams  were  laden  with  skins  besmeared  with  blood,  that 
dangled  overhead  to  catch  the  conservative  influences  of  the 
smoke ;  and  on  a  rude  plank-table  below,  there  ro&e  two  tall 
pyramids  of  braxy-mutton,  heaped  up  each  on  a  corn-riddle. 
The  shepherd, — a  Highlander  of  large  proportions,  but  hard, 
and  thin,  and  worn  by  the  cares  and  toils  of  at  least  sixty 
winters, — sat  moodily  beside  the  fire.  The  state  of  his  flocks 
was  not  cheering ;  and,  besides,  he  had  seen  a  vision  of  late, 
he  said,  that  filled  his  mind  with  strange  forebodings.  He 
had  gone  out  after  nightfall  on  the  previous  evening,  to  a  dank 
hjllow,  in  which  many  of  his  flock  had  died.  The  rain  had 
ceased  a  few  hours  before,  and  a  smart  frost  had  set  in,  that 
filled  the  whole  valley  with  a  wreath  of  silvery  vapor,  dimly 
lighted  by  the  thin  fragment  of  a  moon  that  appeared  as  if 
resting  on  the  hill-top.  The  wreath  stretched  out  its  gray  folds 
beneath  hiri, — for  he  had  climbed  half-way  up  the  acclivity, 


158  MY    SCHOOLS   AND   SCHOOLMASTERS; 

— when  suddenly  the  figure  of  a  man,  formed  as  of  heated 
metal, — the  figure  of  what  seemed  to  be  a  brazen  man  brought 
to  a  red  heat  in  a  furnace, — sprang  up  out  of  the  darkness ; 
and,  after  stalking  over  the  surface  of  the  fog  for  a  few  brief  sec- 
onds, during  which,  however,  it  had  traversed  the  greater  part 
of  the  valley,  it  as  suddenly  disappeared,  leaving  an  evanscent 
trail  of  flame  behind  it.  There  could  be  little  doubt  that  the 
old  shepherd  had  merely  seen  one  of  those  shooting  lights  that 
in  mountain  districts  so  frequently  startle  the  night  traveller ; 
but  the  apparition  now  filled  his  whole  mind,  as  one  vouch- 
safed from  the  spiritual  world,  and  of  strange  and  frightful 
portent ; — 

u  A  meteor  of  the  night  of  distant  years, 
That  flashed  unnoticed,  save  by  wrinkled  eld, 
Mnsing  at  midnight  upon  prophecies." 

I  spent  the  greater  part  of  the  following  day  with  my  cousin 
in  the  forest  of  Corrybhalgan,  and  saw  two  large  herds  of  red 
deer  on  the  hills.  The  forest  was  but  a  shred  of  its  former 
self;  but  the  venerable  trees  still  rose  thick  and  tall  in  some 
of  the  more  inaccessible  hollows  ;  and  it  was  interesting  to 
mark,  where  they  encroached  furthest  on  the  open  wraste,  how 
thoroughly  they  lost  the  ordinary  character  of  the  Scotch  fir, 
and  how,  sending  out  from  their  short  gnarled  boles  immense 
branches,  some  two  or  three  feet  over  the  soil,  they  somewhat 
resembled,  in  their  squat,  dense  proportions,  and  rounded  con- 
tours, gigantic  bee-hives.  It  was  of  itself  worth  while  under- 
taking a  journey  to  the  Highlands,  to  witness  these  last  re- 
mains of  that  arboreous  condition  of  our  country  to  which  the 
youngest  of  our  geological  formations,  the  Peat  Mosses,  bear 
such  significant  witness ;  and  which  still,  largely  existing  as 
the  condition  of  the  northern  countries  of  continental  Europe, 
"  remains  to  attest,"  as  Humboldt  wTell  remarks,  "  more  than 
even  the  records  of  history,  the  youthfulness  of  our  civiliza- 
tion." I  revisited  at  this  time,  before  returning  home,  the 
Barony  of  Gruids;  but  winter  had  not  improved  it:  its 
humble  features,  divested  of  their  summer  complexion,  had  as- 


159 

sumed  an  express  on  of  blank  wretchedness  ;  and  hundreds  of 
its  people,  appalled  at  the  time  by  a  summons  of  ejection 
looked  quite  as  depressed  and  miserable  as  its  scenery. 

Finlay  and  my  friend  of  the  Doocot  Cave  were  no  longer 
within  reach ;  but  during  this  winter  I  was  much  in  the  com- 
pany of  a  young  man  about  five  years  my  senior,  who  was  of 
the  true  stuff  of  which  friends  are  made,  and  to  whom  I  became 
much  attached.  I  had  formed  some  acquaintance  with  him 
about  five  years  before,  on  his  coming  to  the  place  from  the 
neighboring  parish  of  Nigg,  to  be  apprenticed  to  a  house- 
painter,  who  lived  a  few  doors  from  my  mother's.  But  there 
was  at  first  too  great  a  disparity  between  us  for  friendship  :  he 
was  a  tall  lad,  and  I  a  wild  boy  ;  and,  though  occasionally  ad- 
mitted into  his  sanctum, — a  damp  little  room  in  at  outhouse 
in  which  he  slept,  and  in  his  leisure  hours  made  water-color 
drawings  and  verses, — it  was  but  as  an  occasional  visitor,  who, 
having  a  rude  taste  for  literature  and  the  fine  arts,  was  just 
worthy  of  being  encouraged  in  this  way.  My  year  of  toil  had, 
however,  wrought  wonders  for  me :  it  had  converted  me  into 
a  sober  young  man ;  and  William  Ross  now  seemed  to  hnd 
scarce  less  pleasure  in  my  company  than  I  did  in  his.  Poor 
William  !  his  name  must  be  wholly  unfamiliar  to  the  reader ; 
and  yet  he  had  that  in  him  which  ought  to  have  made  it  a 
known  one.  He  was  a  lad  of  genius, — drew  truthfully,  had 
a  nice  sense  of  the  beautiful,  and  possessed  the  true  poetic  fac 
ulty ;  but  he  lacked  health  and  spirits,  and  was  naturally  of 
a  melancholy  temperament,  and  diffident  of  himself.  He  was 
at  this  time  a  thin,  pale  lad,  fair-haired,  with  a  clear  waxen 
complexion,  flat  chest,  and  stooping  figure ;  and  though  he 
lasted  considerably  longer  than  could  have  been  anticipated 
from  his  appearance,  in  seven  years  after  he  was  in  his  grave. 
He  was  unfortunate  in  his  parents :  his  mother,  though  of  a 
devout  family  of  the  old  Scottish  type,  was  an  aberrant  speci- 
men;— she  had  fallen  in  early  youth,  and  had  subsequently 
married  an  ignorant,  half-imbecile  laborer,  witli  whom  she 
passed  a  life  of  poverty  and  unhappiness ;  and  of  this  unprom- 
ising marr'age  William  was  the  eldest  child.     It  was  ccr- 


160 

tainly  no :  from  either  parent  he  derived  his  genius.  His  ma- 
ternal grandmother  and  aunt  were,  however,  excellent  Chris- 
tian women,  of  superior  intelligence,  who  supported  them- 
selves by  keeping  a  girls'  school  in  the  parish ;  and  William, 
who  had  been  brought  at  an  early  age  to  live  with  them,  and 
was  naturally  a  gentle-spirited,  docile  boy,  had  the  advantage, 
in  consequence,  of  having  that  most  important  lesson  of  any 
education, — the  lesson  of  a  good  example  at  home, — set  well 
before  him.  His  boyhood  had  been  that  of  the  poet :  he  had 
loved  to  indulge  in  his  day-dreams  in  the  solitude  of  a  deep 
wood  beside  his  grandmother's  cottage ;  and  had  learned  to 
write  verses  and  draw  landscapes  in  a  rural  locality  in  which 
no  one  had  ever  written  verses  or  drawn  landscapes  before. 
And  finally,  as,  in  the  north  of  Scotland,  in  those  primitive 
times,  the  nearest  approach  to  an  artist  was  a  house-painter, 
William  was  despatched  to  Cromarty,  when  he  had  grown  tall 
enough  for  the  work,  to  cultivate  his  natural  taste  for  the  fine 
arts,  in  papering  rooms  and  lobbies,  and  in  painting  railings  and 
wheel-barrows.  There  are,  I  believe,  a  few  instances  on  rec- 
ord of  house-painters  rising  to  be  artists :  the  history  of  the 
late  Mr.  William  Bonnar,  of  the  Royal  Academy  of  Edinburgh, 
furnishes  one  of  these ;  but  the  fact  that  the  cases  are  not 
more  numerous  serves,  I  fear,  to  show  how  much  oftener  a 
turn  for  drawing  is  a  merely  imitative,  than  an  original,  self- 
derived  faculty.  Almost  all  the  apprentices  of  our  neighbor 
the  house-painter  had  their  turn  for  drawing,  decided  enough 
to  influence  their  choice  of  a  profession ;  and  what  was  so  re- 
peatedly the  case  in  Cromarty  must,  I  should  think,  have  been 
the  case  in  many  similar  places;  but  of  how  few  of  these  em- 
bryo limners  have  the  works  appeared  in  even  a  provincial 
exhibition-room ! 

At  the  time  my  intimacy  with  William  became  most  close, 
both  his  grandmother  and  aunt  were  dead,  and  he  wras  strug- 
gling with  great  difficulty  through  the  last  vear  of  his  appren- 
ticeship. As  his  master  supplied  him  with  but  food  and  lodg- 
ing, his  linen  was  becoming  scant,  and  his  Sabbath  suit  shabby  ; 
and  he  was  looking  forward  to  the  time  when  he  should  be  at 


OR,  THE   STORV   OF   MY   EDUCATION.  161 

liberty  to  work  for  himself,  with  all  the  anxiety  of  the  voyager 
who  fears  that  his  meagre  stock  of  provisions  and  water  may 
wholly  fail  him  ere  he  reaches  port.  I  of  course  could  not  as- 
sist him.  I  was  an  apprentice,  like  himself,  and  had  not  the 
command  of  a  sixpence ;  nor,  had  the  case  been  otherwise, 
would  he  in  all  probability  have  consented  to  accept  of  my 
help  ;  but  he  lacked  spirits  as  much  as  money,  and  in  that  par- 
ticular my  society  did  him  good.  We  used  to  beat  over  all 
manner  of  subjects  together,  especially  poetry  and  the  fine 
arts  ;  and  though  we  often  differed,  our  differences  served  only 
to  knit  us  the  more.  He,  for  instance,  deemed  the  "  Min- 
strel" of  Beattie  the  most  perfect  of  English  poems  ;  but  though 
he  liked  Dryden's  "  Virgil "  well  enough,  he  could  find  no 
poetry  whatever  in  the  "  Absalom  and  Ahithophel"  of  Dry  den ; 
whereas  I  liked  both  the  "  Minstrel "  and  the  "Ahithophel," 
and,  indeed,  could  hardly  say,  unlike  as  they  were  in  com- 
plexion and  character,  which  of  the  two  I  read  oftenest  or  ad- 
mired most.  Again,  among  the  prose  writers,  Addison  was 
his  especial  favorite,  and  Swift  he  detested  ;  whereas  I  liked 
Addison  and  Swift  almost  equally  well,  and  passed  without 
sense  of  incongruity,  from  the  Vision  of  Mirza,  or  the  paper 
on  Westminster  Abbey,  to  the  true  account  of  the  death  of 
Partridge,  or  the  Tale  of  a  Tub.  If,  however,  he  could  wonder 
at  the  latitudinarian  laxity  of  my  taste,  there  was  at  least  one 
special  department  in  which  I  could  marvel  quite  as  much  at 
the  incomprehensible  breadth  of  his.  Nature  had  given  me, 
in  despite  of  the  phrenologists,  who  find  music  indicated  by 
two  large  protuberances  on  the  corners  of  my  forehead,  a  de- 
plorably defective  ear.  My  Uncle  Sandy,  who  was  profoundly 
skilled  in  psalmody,  had  done  his  best  to  make  a  singer  of  me  ; 
but  he  was  at  length  content  to  stop  short,  after  a  world  of 
effort,  when  he  had,  as  he  thought,  brought  me  to  distinguish 
St.  George's  from  any  other  psalm-tune.  On  the  introduction, 
however,  of  a  second  tune  into  the  parish  church  that  repeated 
the  line  at  the  end  of  the  stanza,  even  this  poor  fragment  of 
ab/.ity  deserted  me ;  and  to  this  day, — though  I  rather  like 
the  strains  of  the  bagpipe  in  general,  and  have  no  objection  to 


162  MY  SCHOOLS  AND  SCHOOLMASTERS' 

drums  in  particular, — doubts  do  occasionally  come  across  mtj 
whether  there  be  in  reality  any  such  thing  as  tune.  My 
friend  William  Ross  was,  on  the  contrary,  a  born  musician. 
When  a  little  boy,  he  had  constructed  for  himself  a  fife  and 
clarionet  of  young  shoots  of  elder,  on  which  he  succeeded  in 
discoursing  sweet  music  ;  and,  addressing  himself  at  another 
and  later  period  to  both  the  principles  and  practices  of  the 
science,  he  became  one  of  the  best  flute-players  in  the  district. 
Notwithstanding  my  dulness  of  ear,  I  do  cherish  a  pleasing 
recollection  of  the  sweet  sounds  that  used  to  issue  from  his 
little  room  in  the  outhouse,  every  milder  evening  as  I  ap- 
proached, and  of  the  soothed  and  tranquil  state  in  which  I 
ever  found  him  on  these  occasions,  as  I  entered.  I  could  not 
understand  his  music,  but  I  saw  that,  mentally  at  least,  though, 
I  fear,  not  physically, — for  the  respiratory  organs  were  weak, 
— it  did  him  great  good. 

There  was,  however,  one  special  province  in  which  our  tastes 
thoroughly  harmonized.  We  were  both  of  us,  if  not  alike 
favored,  at  least  equally  devoted,  lovers  of  the  wild  and  beau- 
tiful in  nature ;  and  many  a  moon-light  walk  did  we  take  to- 
gether this  winter  among  the  woods  and  rocks  of  the  Hill.  It 
was  once  said  of  Thomson,  by  one  who  was  himself  not  at  all 
morbidly  poetic  in  his  feelings,  that  "  he  could  not  have  viewed 
two  candles  burning  but  with  a  poetical  eye."  It  might  at 
least  be  said  of  my  friend,  that  he  never  saw  a  piece  of  fine  or 
striking  scenery  without  being  deeply  moved  by  it.  As  for 
the  mere  candles,  if  placed  on  a  deal-dresser  or  shop-counter, 
they  might  have  failed  to  touch  him ;  but  if  burning  in  some 
tyke-wake  beside  the  dead,  or  in  some  vaulted  crypt  or  lonely 
rock-cave,  he  also  could  not  have  looked  other  than  poet- 
ically on  them.  I  have  seen  him  awed  into  deep  solemnity, 
in  our  walks,  by  the  rising  moon,  as  it  peered  down  upon  us 
over  the  hill,  red  and  broad,  and  cloud-encircled,  through  the 
interstices  of  some  clump  of  dark  firs;  and  have  observed] 
him  become  suddenly  silent,  as,  emerging  from  the  moonlight 
woods,  we  looked  into  a  rugged  dell,  and  saw  far  beneath,  the 
slim  rippling  streamlet  gleaming  in  the  light,  like  a  narrow 


OR,   THE   STORY   OF   MY   EDUCATION".  163 

strip  of  the  aurora  borealis  shot  athwart  a  dark  sky,  when  the 
steep  rough  sides  of  the  ravine,  on  either  hand,  were  enveloped 
in  gloom.  My  friend's  opportunities  of  general  reading  had 
not  been  equal  to  my  own,  but  he  was  acquainted  with  at  least 
one  class  of  books  of  which  I  knew  scarce  anything ; — he  had 
carefully  studied  Hogarth's  "  Analysis  of  Beauty,"  Fresnoy's 
"Art  of  Painting,"  "  Gessner's  Letters,"  the  "  Lectures  of  Sir 
Joshua  Reynolds,"  and  several  other  works  of  a  similar  kind ; 
and  in  all  the  questions  of  criticism  that  related  to  external 
form,  the  effects  of  light  and  shade,  and  the  influences  of  the 
meteoric  media,  I  found  him  a  high  authority.  He  had  a  fine 
eye  for  detecting  the  peculiar  features  which  gave  individuality 
and  character  to  a  landscape, — those  features,  as  he  used  to 
say,  which  the  artist  or  poet  should  seize  and  render  promi- 
nent, while,  at  the  same  time,  lest  they  should  be  lost  as  in  a 
mob,  he  softened  down  the  others ;  and,  recognizing  him  as  a 
master  in  this  department  of  characteristic  selection,  I  delight- 
ed to  learn  in  his  school, — by  far  the  best  of  its  kind  I  ever 
attended.  I  was  able,  however,  in  part  to  repay  him,  by  in- 
troducing him  to  many- an  interesting  spot  among  the  rocks, 
or  to  retired  dells  and  hollows  in  the  woods,  which,  from  his 
sedentary  habits,  he  would  scarce  ever  have  discovered  for 
himself.  I  taught  him,  too,  to  light  fires  after  nightfall  in  the 
caves,  that  we  might  watch  the  effects  of  the  strong  lights  and 
deep  shadows  in  scenes  so  wild ;  and  I  still  vividly  remember 
the  delight  he  experienced,  when,  after  kindling  up  in  the  day- 
time a  strong  blaze  at  the  mouth  of  the  Doocot  Cave,  which 
filled  the  recess  within  with  smoke,  we  forced  our  way  inwards 
through  the  cloud,  to  mark  the  appearance  of  the  sea  and  the 
opposite  land  seen  through  a  medium  so  dense,  and  saw,  on 
turning  round,  the  landscape  strangely  enwrapped  "  in  the  dun 
hues  of  earthquake  and  eclipse."  We  have  visited,  after  night- 
fall, the  glades  of  the  surrounding  woods  together,  to  listen  to 
the  night  breeze,  as  it  swept  sullenly  along  the  pine-tops  ;  and, 
after  striking  a  light  in  the  old  burial  vault  of  a  solitary  church- 
yard, we  have  watched  the  ray  falling  on  the  fissured  walls  and 
ropy  damp  and  mould ;  or,  on  setting  on  fire  a  few  withered 


164  MY   SCHOOLS  AND  SCHOOLMASTERS; 

leaves,  hare  seen  the  smoke  curling  slowly  upwards,  through 
a  square  opening  in  the  roof,  into  the  dark  sky.  William's 
mind  was  not  of  the  scientific  cast.  He  had,  however,  acquired 
some  knowledge  of  the  mathematics,  and  some  skill  both  in 
architecture  and  in  the  anatomy  of  the  human  skeleton  and 
muscles ;  while  of  perspective  he  perhaps  knew  well-nigh  as 
much  as  was  known  at  the  time.  I  remember  he  preferred 
the  Treatise  on  this  art,  of  Ferguson  the  astronomer  and  me- 
chanician, to  any  other ;  and  used  to  say  that  the  twenty  years 
spent  by  the  philosopher  as  a  painter  were  fully  redeemed, 
though  they  had  produced  no  good  pictures,  by  his  little  work 
on  Perspective  alone.  My  friend  had  ere  this  time  given  up 
the  writing  of  verses,  very  much  because  he  had  learned  to 
know  what  verses  ought  to  be,  and  failed  to  satisfy  himself 
with  his  own ;  and  ere  his  death,  I  saw  him  resign  in  success- 
ion his  flute  and  pencil,  and  yield  up  all  the  hopes  he  had 
once  cherished  of  being  known.  But  his  weak  health  affected 
his  spirits,  and  prostrated  the  energies  of  a  mind  originally 
rather  delicate  than  strong. 


OE,   THE  STOET  OF  MY  ELL  CATION.  105 


CHAPTEE  IX 


"Others  apart  eat  on  a  hill  retired, 
In  thoughts  more  elevate  ;  and  reasoned  high 
Of  Providence,  foreknowledge,  will,  and  fate, 
Fixed  fate,  freewill,  foreknowledge  absolute, 
And  found  no  end  in  wandering  mazes  lost." 

Milton. 

Sprin  3i  came  on,  and  brought  with  it  its  round  of  labor, — 
quarryhg,  building,  and  stone-cutting;  but  labor  had  now 
no  terrors  for  me  :  I  wrought  hard  during  the  hours  allotted  to 
toil,  and  was  content ;  and  read,  wrote,  or  walked,  during  the 
hours  that  were  properly  my  own,  and  was  happy.  Early  in 
May,  however,  we  had  finished  all  the  work  for  which  my 
master  had  previously  contracted ;  and  as  trade  was  usually 
dull  at  the  time,  he  could  procure  no  further  contracts,  and 
the  squad  was  thrown  out  of  employment.  I  rushed  to  the 
woods  and  rocks,  and  got  on  with  my  lessons  in  geology  and 
natural  science ;  but  my  master,  who  had  no  lessons  to  learn, 
wearied  sadly  of  doing  nothing;  and  at  length,  very  unwill 
'ngly, — for  he  had  enacted  the  part  of  the  employer,  though 
jn  a  small  scale,  for  a  full  quarter  of  a  century, — he  set  him- 
self to  procure  work  as  a  journeyman.  He  had  another  ap- 
prentice at  the  time;  and  he,  availing  himself  of  the  oppor 
tunity  which  the  old  man's  inability  of  employing  him  :?ur 
nished,  quitted  his  service,  and  commenced  work  on  his  own 
behalf, — a  step  to  which,  though  the  position  of  a  journey 


1(56 

man's  apprentice  seemed  rather  an  anomalous  one,  I  could  not, 
see  my  way.  And  so,  as  work  turned  up  for  both  master 
and  apprentice  at  a  place  about  twenty  miles  distant  from 
Cromarty,  I  set  out  with  him,  to  make  trial,  for  the  first  time, 
of  the  sort,  of  life  that  is  spent  in  bothies  and  barracks.  Our 
work  was  to  consist,  I  was  informed,  of  building  and  hewing 
at  an  extensive  farm-steading  on  the  banks  of  the  river  Conon, 
which  one  of  the  wealthier  proprietors  of  the  district  was  get- 
ting built  for  himself,  not  on  contract,  but  by  the  old  mode 
of  employing  operatives  on  days'  wages ;  and  my  master  was 
to  be  permitted  to  rate  as  a  full  journeyman,  though  now 
considerably  in  his  decline  as  a  workman,  on  condition  that 
the  services  of  his  apprentice  should  be  rated  so  much  lower 
than  their  actual  value  as  to  render  master  and  man  regarded 
as  one  lot, — a  fair  bargain  to  the  employer,  and  somewhat 
more.  The  arrangement  was  not  quite  a  flattering  one  for 
me ;  but  I  acquiesced  in  it  without  remark,  and  set  out  with 
my  master  for  Conon-side. 

The  evening  sun  was  gleaming  delightfully,  as  we  neared 
the  scene  of  our  labors,  on  the  broad  reaches  of  the  Conon, 
and  lighting  up  the  fine  woods  and  noble  hills  beyond.  It 
would,  1  know,  be  happiness  to  toil  for  some  ten  hours  or  so 
per  day  in  so  sweet  a  district,  and  then  to  find  the  evening 
all  my  own ;  but  on  reaching  the  work,  we  were  told  that  we 
would  require  to  set  out  in  the  morning  for  a  place  about  four 
miles  farther  to  the  west,  where  there  were  a  few  workmen 
engaged  in  building  a  jointure-house  for  the  lady  of  a  Ross-shire 
proprietor  lately  dead,  and  which  lay  off  the  river  in  a  rather 
unpromising  direction.  And  so,  a  little  after  sunrise,  we  had 
to  take  the  road  with  our  tools  slung  across  our  backs,  and 
before  six  o'clock  we  reached  the  rising  jointure-house,  and  set 
to  work,  The  country  around  was  somewhat  bare  and  dreary, 
— a  scene  of  bogs  and  moors,  overlooked  by  a  range  of  tame 
heathy  hills ;  but  in  our  immediate  neighborhood  there  was 
a  picturesque  little  scene, — rather  a  vignette  than  a  picture, 
— that  in  some  degree  redeemed  the  general  deformity.  Two 
meal- mills — the  one  small  and  old,  the  other  larger  and  more 


167 

modern — were  placed  beside  each  other,  on  ground  so  un- 
equal, that,  seen  in  front,  the  smaller  seemed  perched  on  the 
top  of  the  larger  ;  a  group  of  tall  graceful  larches  rose  imme- 
diate1}^ beside  the  lower  building,  and  hung  their  slim  branches 
over  the  huge  wheel ;  while  a  few  aged  ash-trees  that  encircled 
the  mill-pond,  which,  in  sending  its  waters  down  the  hill,  sup- 
plied both  wheels  in  succession,  sprang  up  immediately  beside 
the  upper  erection,  and  shot  their  branches  over  its  roof.  On 
closing  our  labors  for  the  evening,  we  repaired  to  the  old 
mansion-house,  about  half  a  mile  away,  in  which  the  dowager 
lady  for  whom  we  wrought  still  continued  to  reside,  and  where 
we  expected  to  be  accommodated,  like  the  other  workmen, 
with  beds  for  the  night.  We  had  not  been  expected,  how- 
ever, and  there  were  no  beds  provided  for  us ;  but  as  the 
Highland  carpenter  who  had  engaged  to  execute  the  wood- 
work of  the  new  building  had  an  entire  bed  to  himself,  we 
were  told  we  might,  if  we  pleased,  lie  three  a-bed  with  him. 
But  though  the  carpenter  was,  I  dare  say,  a  most  respectable 
man,  and  a  thorough  Celt,  I  had  observed  during  the  day 
that  he  was  miserably  affected  by  a  certain  skin  disease, 
which,  as  it  was  more  prevalent  in  the  past  of  Highland 
history  than  even  at  this  time,  must  have  rendered  his  ances- 
tors of  old  very  formidable,  even  without  their  broadswords  ; 
and  so  I  determined  on  no  account  to  sleep  with  him.  I  gave 
my  master  fair  warning,  by  telling  him  what  I  had  seen  ;  but 
Uncle  David,  always  insensible  to  danger,  conducted  himself 
on  the  occasion  as  in  the  sinking  boat  or  under  the  falling 
bank,  and  so  went  to  bed  with  the  carpenter  ;  while  I,  steal- 
ing out,  got  into  the  upper  story  of  an  outhouse  ;  and,  fling- 
ing myself  down  in  my  clothes  on  the  floor,  on  a  heap  of 
straw,  was  soon  fast  asleep.  I  was,  however,  not  much  ac- 
customed at  the  time  to  so  rough  a  bed ;  every  time  I  turned 
me  in  my  lair,  the  strong,  stiff*  straw  rustled  against  my  face ; 
and  about  midnight  I  awoke. 

I  rose  to  a  little  window  which  opened  upon  a  dreary  moor, 
and  commanded  a  view,  in  the  distance,  of  a  ruinous  chapel 
and  solitary  burying-ground,  famous  in  the  traditions  of  the 


168 

district  as  the  chapel  and  burying-ground  of  Gillie-christ.  Dr. 
Johnson  relates,  in  his  "  Journey,"  that  when  eating,  on  ono 
occasion,  his  dinner  in  Skye  to  the  music  of  the  bagpipe,  he 
was  informed  by  a  gentleman,  "  that  in  some  remote  time,  the 
Macdonalds  of  Glengarry  having  been  injured  or  offended  by 
the  inhabitants  of  Culloden,  and  resolving  to  have  justice,  or 
vengeance,  they  came  to  Culloden  on  a  Sunday,  when,  finding 
their  enemies  at  worship,  they  shut  them  up  in  the  church, 
which  they  set  on  fire  ;  and  this,  said  he,  is  the  tune  that  the 
piper  played  while  they  were  burning."  Culloden,  however, 
was  not  the  scene  of  the  atrocity  ;  it  was  the  Mackenzies  of 
Ord  that  their  fellow-Christians  and  brother-Churchmen,  the 
Macdonalds  of  Glengary  succeeded  in  converting  into  ani- 
mal charcoal,  when  the  poor  people  were  engaged,  like  good 
Catholics,  in  attending  mass  ;  and  in  this  old  chapel  of  Gillie- 
christ  was  the  experiment  performed.  The  Macdonalds,  after 
setting  fire  to  the  building,  held  fast  the  doors  until  the  last  of 
the  Mackenzies  of  Ord  had  perished  in  the  flames  ;  and  then, 
pursued  by  the  Mackenzies  of  Brahan,  they  fled  into  their  own 
country,  to  glory  every  after  in  the  greatness  of  the  feat.  The 
evening  was  calm  and  still,  but  dark  for  the  season,  for  it  was 
now  near  mid-summer  ;  and  every  object  had  disappeared  in 
the  gloom,  save  the  outlines  of  a  ridge  of  low  hills  that  rose 
beyond  the  moor  ;  but  I  could  determine  where  the  chapel 
and  churchyard  lay  ;  and  great  was  my  astonishment  to  see 
a  light  flickering  amid  the  grave-stones  and  the  ruins.  At  one 
time  seen,  at  another  hid,  like  the  revolving  lantern  of  a  light- 
house, it  seemed  to  be  passing  round  and  round  the  building  ; 
and,  as  I  listened,  I  could  hear  distinctly  what  appeared  to  be 
a  continuous  screaming  of  most  unearthly  sound,  proceeding 
from  evidently  the  same  spot  as  the  twinkle  of  the  light. 
What  could  be  the  meaning  of  such  an  apparition,  with  such 
accompaniments, — the  time  of  its  appearance  midnight,  the 
place  a  solitary  burying-ground  ?  I  was  in  the  Highlands  ; 
was  there  truth,  after  all,  in  the  many  floating  Highland  stories 
of  spectral  dead-lights  and  wild  supernatural  sounds,  seen  and 
heard  by  nights  in  lonely  places  of  sepulture,  when  some  sud- 


169 

der.  death  was  near  ]  I  did  feel  my  blood  run  somewhat  cold, 
— fl  >r  I  had  not  yet  passed  the  credulous  time  of  life, — and  had 
som^  thoughts  of  stealing  down  to  my  master's  bed-side,  to 
be  within  reach  of  the  human  voice ;  when  I  saw  the  light 
quitting  the  churchyard  and  coming  downward  across  the 
moor  in  a  straight  line,  though  tossed  about  in  the  dead  calm, 
in  many  a  wave  and  flourish  ;  and  further,  I  could  ascertain, 
tfhat  what  I  had  deemed  a  persistent  screaming  was  in  reality 
t\  continuous  singing,  carried  on  at  the  pitch  of  a  powerful 
chough  somewhat  cracked  voice.  In  a  moment  after,  one  of 
the  servant  girls  of  the  mansion-house  came  rushing  out  half- 
dres.vd  to  the  door  of  an  outer  building  in  which  the  work- 
men iwd  a  farm-servant  lay,  and  summoned  them  immediate- 
ly to  r,Ve.  Mad  Bell  had  again  broke  out,  she  said,  and  would 
set  tbem  on  fire  a  second  time. 

The  men  rose,  and,  as  they  appeared  at  the  door,  I  joined 
them  ;  but  on  striking  out  a  few  yards  into  the  moor,  we 
found  the  maniac  already  in  the  custody  of  two  men,  who  had 
seized  and  were  dragging  her  towards  her  cottage,  a  miserable 
hovel,  about  half  a  mile  away.  She  never  once  spoke  to  us, 
but  continued  singing,  though  in  a  lower  and  more  subdued 
tone  of  voice  than  before,  a  Gaelic  song.  We  reached  her 
hut,  and,  making  use  of  her  own  light,  we  entered.  A  chain 
of  considerable  length,  attached  by  a  stopple  to  one  of  the 
Highland  couples  of  the  erection,  showed  that  her  neighbors 
had  been  compelled  on  former  occasions  to  abridge  her  liberty  ; 
and  one  of  the  men,  in  now  making  use  of  it,  so  wound  it 
round  her  person  as  to  bind  her  down,  instead  of  giving  her 
the  scope  of  the  apartment,  to  the  damp  uneven  floor.  A  very 
damp  and  uneven  floor  it  was.  There  were  crevices  in  the 
roof  above,  which  gave  free  access  to  the  elements  ;  and  the 
turf  walls,  perilously  bulged  by  the  leakage  in  several  places, 
were  green  with  mould.  One  of  the  masons  and  I  simulta 
neously  interfered.  It  would  never  do,  we  said,  to  pin  down 
a  human  creature  in  that  way,  to  the  damp  earth.  Why  not 
give  her  what  the  length  of  the  chain  permitted, — the  full 
range  of  the  room  1  If  we  did  that,  replied  the  man,  she  would 


170  MY  SCHOOLS   AND  SCHOOLMASTERS; 

be  sure  to  set  herself  free  before  morning,  and  we  would  just 
have  to  rise  and  bind  her  again.  But  we  resolved,  we  rejoined, 
whatever  might  happen,  that  she  should  not  be  tied  down  in 
that  way  to  the  filthy  floor ;  and  ultimately  we  succeeded  in 
carrying  our  point.  The  song  ceased  for  a  moment  ;  the 
maniac  turned  round,  presenting  full  to  the  light  the  strongly- 
marked,  energetic  features  of  a  woman  of  about  fifty -five ;  and, 
surveying  us  with  a  keen  scrutinizing  glance,  altogether  un 
like  that  of  the  idiot,  she  emphatically  repeated  the  sacred 
text,  "  Blessed  are  the  merciful,  for  they  shall  obtain  mercy." 
She  then  began  singing,  in  a  low,  mournful  tone,  an  old  Scotch 
ballad  ;  and,  as  we  left  the  cottage,  we  could  hear  her  voice 
gradually  heightening  as  we  retired,  until  it  had  at  length  at- 
tained to  its  former  pitch  and  wildness  of  tone. 

Before  daybreak  the  maniac  succeeded  in  setting  herself 
free  ;  but  the  paroxysm  of  the  fit  had  meanwhile  passed  over  ; 
and  when  she  visited  me  next  morning  at  the  place  where  I 
was  hewing, — a  little  apart  from  the  other  workmen,  who  were 
all  engaged  in  building  on  the  walls, — save  for  the  strongly- 
marked  features  I  would  scarcely  have  recognized  her.  She 
was  neatly  dressed,  though  her  gown  was  neither  fine  nor  new ; 
her  clean  white  cap  was  nicely  arranged  ;  and  her  air  seemed 
rather  that  of  the  respectable  tradesman's  wife  or  daughter, 
than  of  the  ordinary  country  woman.  For  some  little  time  she 
stood  beside  me  without  speaking,  and  then  somewhat  abrupt- 
ly asked, — "  What  makes  you  work  as  a  mason  V  I  made 
some  commonplace  reply  ;  but  it  failed  to  satisfy  her.  "  All 
your  fellows  are  real  masons,"  she  said ;  "  but  you  are  merely 
in  the  disguise  of  a  mason ;  and  I  have  come  to  consult  you 
about  the  deep  matters  of  the  soul."  The  matters  she  had 
come  to  inquire  regarding  were  really  very  deep  indeed  ;  she 
had,  I  found,  carefully  read  Flavel's  "  Treatise  on  the  Soul  of 
Man," — a  volume  which,  fortunately  for  my  credit,  I  also  had 
perused  ;  and  we  were  soon  deep  together  in  the  rather  bad 
metaphysics  promulgated  on  the  subject  by  the  Schoolmen, 
and  republished  by  the  divine.  It  seemed  clear,  she  said,  that 
everj  human  soul  was  created, — not  transmitted, — created, 


OR,   THE   STORY  OF  MY  EDUCATION".  171 

mayhap,  at  the  time  when  it  began  to  be ;  but  if  so,  how,  or 
on  what  principle,  did  it  come  under  the  influence  of  the  Fall  % 
I  merely  remarked,  in  reply,  that  she  was  of  course  acquaint- 
ed with  the  views  of  the  old  theologians, — such  as  Flavel, — > 
men  who  really  knew  as  much  about  such  things  as  could  be 
known,  and  perhaps  a  little  more  ;  was  she  not  satisfied  with 
them  1  Not  dissatisfied,  she  said  ;  but  she  wanted  more  light. 
Could  a  soul  not  derived  from  our  first  parents  be  rendered 
vile  simply  by  being  put  into  a  body  derived  from  them  1  One 
of  the  passages  in  Flavel,  on  this  special  point,  had  luckily 
struck  me,  from  its  odd  obscurity  of  expression,  and  I  was  able 
to  quote  it  in  nearly  the  original  words.  You  know,  I  remark- 
ed, that  a  great  authority  on  the  question  "  declined  confident- 
ly to  affirm  that  the  moral  infection  came  by  way  of  physical 
agency,  as  a  rusty  scabbard  infects  and  defiles  a  bright  sword 
when  sheathed  therein  ;  it  might  be,"  he  thought,  "  by  way 
of  natural  concomitancy,  as  Estius  will  have  it  ;  or,  to  speak  as 
Dr.  Reynolds  doth,  by  way  of  ineffable  resultancy  and  emana- 
tion." As  this  was  perfectly  unintelligible,  it  seemed  to  sat- 
isfy my  new  friend.  I  added,  however,  that,  like  herself,  I 
was  waiting  for  more  light  on  the  difficulty,  and  might  set  my- 
self to  it  in  right  earnest,  when  I  found  it  fully  demonstrated 
that  the  Creator  could  not,  or  did  not  make  man  equally  the 
descendant  in  soul  as  in  body  of  the  original  progenitors  of  the 
race.  I  believed,  with  the  great  Mr.  Locke,  that  he  could  do 
it ;  nor  was  I  aware  he  had  anywhere  said  that  what  he  could 
do  in  the  matter  he  had  not  done.  Such  was  the  first  of 
many  strange  conversations  with  the  maniac,  who,  with  all 
her  sad  brokenness  of  mind,  was  one  of  the  most  intellectual 
women  I  ever  knew.  Humble  as  were  the  circumstances  in 
which  I  found  her,  her  brother,  who  was  at  this  time  about 
two  years  dead,  had  been  one  of  the  best-known  ministers  of 
the  Scottish  Church  in  the  Northern  Highlands.  To  quote  from 
an  affectionate  notice  by  the  editor  of  a  Jittle  volume  of  his 
sermons,  published  a  few  years  ago, — the  Rev.  Mr.  Mackenzie 
of  North  Leith, — he  "  was  a  profound  divine,  an  eloquent 
preacher,  a  deeply-experienced  Christian,  and,  withal,  a  classi- 


172 

cal  scholar,  a  popular  poet,  a  man  of  original  genius,  and  emi- 
nently a  man  of  prayer."  And  his  poor  sister  Isabel,  though 
grieviously  vexed  at  times  by  a  dire  insanity,  seemed  to  have 
received  from  nature  powers  mayhap  not  inferior  to  his. 

We  were  not  always  engaged  with  the  old  divines ;  Isabel's 
tenacious  memory  was  stored  with  the  traditions  of  the  dis- 
trict ;  and  many  an  anecdote  could  she  tell  of  old  chieftains, 
forgotten  on  the  lands  which  had  once  been  their  own,  and  of 
Highland  poets,  whose  songs  had  been  sung  for  the  last  time. 
The  story  of  the  "  Raid  of  Gillie-christ"  has  been  repeatedly 
in  print  since  I  first  heard  it  from  her  ;  it  forms  the  basis  of 
the  late  Sir  Thomas  Dick  Lauder's  powerful  tale  of  "  Allen 
with  the  Red  Jacket ;"  and  I  have  seen  it  in  its  more  ordinary 
traditionary  dress,  in  the  columns  of  the  Inverness  Courier, 
But  at  this  time  it  was  new  to  me ;  and  on  no  occasion  could 
it  have  lost  less  by  the  narrator.  She  was  herself  a  Macken- 
zie ;  and  her  eyes  flashed  a  wild  fire  when  she  spoke  of  the 
barbarous  and  brutal  Macdonalds,  and  of  the  measured  march 
and  unfaltering  notes  of  their  piper  outside  the  burning  cha- 
pel, when  her  perishing  ancestors  were  shrieking  in  their  agony 
within.  She  was  acquainted  also  with  the  resembling  story  of 
that  Cave  of  Eigg,  in  which  a  body  of  the  Macdonalds  them- 
selves, consisting  of  men,  women,  and  children, — the  entire 
population  of  the  island, — had  been  suffocated  wholesale  b / 
the  Macleods  of  Skye  ;  and  I  have  heard  from  her  more  gooo 
sense  on  the  subject  of  the  Highland  character,  "  ere  the  gos 
pel  changed  it,"  as  illustrated  by  these  passages  in  their  his 
tory,  than  from  some  Highlanders  sane  enough  on  other  mat 
fcers,  but  carried  away  by  a  too  indiscriminating  respect  for  tht* 
wild  courage  and  half-instinctive  fidelity  of  the  old  race.  The 
Ancient  Highlanders  were  bold,  faithful  dogs,  she  has  said, 
ready  to  die  for  their  masters,  and  prepared  to  do,  at  their  bid- 
ding, like  other  dogs,  the  most  cruel  and  wicked  actions ;  and 
as  dogs  often  were  they  treated  ;  nay,  even  still,  after  religion 
had  made  them  men  (as  if  condemned  to  suffer  for  the  sins  of 
their  parents),  they  were  frequently  treated  as  dogs.  The 
pious  martyrs  of  the  south  had  contended  in  God's  behalf ; 


OR,   THE   STORY   OF   MY   EDUCATION.  173 

whereas  the  poor  Highlanders  of  the  north  had  contended  but 
in  behalf  of  their  chiefs ;  and  so,  while  God  had  been  kind  to 
the  descendants  of  His  servants,  the  chiefs  had  been  very  un- 
kind to  the  descendants  of  theirs.  From  excellent  sense,  how- 
ever, in  these  our  conversations,  my  new  companion  used 
often  to  wander  into  deplorable  insanity.  Her  midnight 
visits  to  the  old  chapel  of  Gillie-christ  were  made,  she  said, 
in  order  that  she  might  consult  her  father  in  her  difficulties ; 
and  the  good  man,  though  often  silent  for  nights  together, 
rarely  failed  to  soothe  and  counsel  her  from  the  depths  of 
his  quiet  grave,  on  every  occasion  when  her  unhappiness  be- 
came extreme.  It  was  acting  on  his  advice,  however,  that  she 
had  set  fire  to  a  door  that  had  for  a  time  excluded  her  from 
the  burying-ground,  and  burnt  it  down.  She  had  been  mar- 
ried in  early  life ;  and  I  have  rarely  heard  anything  wilder  or 
more  ingenious  than  the  account  she  gave  of  a  quarrel  with 
her  husband,  that  terminated  in  their  separation. 

After  living  happily  with  him  for  several  years,  she  all  at 
once,  she  said,  became  most  miserable,  and  everything  in  their 
household  went  on  ill.  But  though  her  husband  seemed  to 
have  no  true  conception  of  the  cause  of  their  new-born  misery, 
she  had.  He  used,  from  motives  of  economy,  to  keep  a  pig, 
which,  when  converted  into  bacon,  was  always  useful  in  the 
family  ;  and  an  occasional  ham  of  the  animal  now  and  then 
found  its  way  to  her  brother's  manse,  as  a  sort  of  friendly  ac- 
knowledgment of  the  many  good  things  received  from  him. 
One  wretched  pig,  however, — a  little  black  thing,  only  a  few 
weeks  old, — which  her  husband  had  purchased  at  a  fair,  was, 
she  soon  discovered,  possessed  by  an  evil  spirit,  that  had  a 
strange  power  of  quitting  the  animal  to  do  mischief  in  her 
dwelling,  and  an  ability  of  not  only  rendering  her  extremely 
unhappy,  but  at  times  even  of  getting  into  her  husband.  The 
husband  himself,  poor  blinded  man  !  could  see  nothing  of  all 
this;  nor  would  he  believe  her,  who  could  and  did  see  it;  nor 
yet  could  she  convince  him  that  it  was  decidedly  his  duty  to 
get  rid  of  the  pig.  She  was  not  satisfied  that  she  herself  had 
a  clear  right  to  kill  the  creature :  it  was  undoubtedly  her  hus- 


174 

band's  property,  not  hers  ;  but  could  she  only  succeed  in 
placing  it  in  circumstances  in  which  it  might  be  free  either  to 
kill  itself  or  not,  and  were  it,  in  these  circumstances,  to  de- 
stroy itself,  she  was  sure  all  the  better  divines  would  acquit 
her  of  aught  approaching  to  moral  guilt  in  the  transaction ; 
and  the  relieved  household  would  be  free  from  both  the  evil 
spirit  and  the  little  pig.  The  mill-pond  was  situated  imme- 
diately beside  her  dwelling ;  its  steep  sides,  which  were  walled 
with  stone,  were  unscaleable  by  at  least  little  pigs ;  and  among 
the  aged  ashes  which  sprung  up  immediately  at  its  edge,  there 
was  one  that  shot  out  a  huge  bough,  like  a  bent  arm,  directly 
over  it,  far  beyond  the  stonework,  so  that  the  boys  of  the  neigh- 
borhood used  to  take  their  seat  on  it,  and  fish  for  little  trout 
that  sometimes  found  their  way  into  the  pond.  On  the  pro- 
jecting branch  one  day,  when  her  husband's  back  was  turned, 
and  there  was  no  one  to  see  or  interfere,  she  placed  the  pig. 
It  stood  for  awhile :  there  was  no  doubt,  therefore,  it  could 
stand ;  but,  unwilling  to  stand  any  longer,  it  sprawled, — slip- 
ped,— fell, — dropped  into  the  water,  in  short, — and  ultimate- 
ly, as  it  could  not  make  its  way  up  the  bank,  was  drowned. 
And  thus  ended  the  pig.  It  would  seem,  however,  as  if  the 
evil  spirit  had  got  into  her  husband  instead, — so  extreme  was 
his  indignation  at  the  transaction.  He  would  accept  of  neither 
apology  nor  explanation  ;  and  unable,  of  course,  to  live  any 
longer  under  the  same  roof  with  a  man  so  unreasonable,  she 
took  the  opportunity,  when  he  was  quitting  that  part  of  the 
country  for  employment  at  a  distance,  to  remain  behind  in 
her  old  cottage, — the  same  in  which  she  at  that  time  resided. 
Such  was  the  maniac's  account  of  her  quarrel  wTith  her  hus- 
band ;  and,  when  listening  to  men  chopping  little  familiar 
logic  on  one  of  the  profoundest  mysteries  of  Revelation, — a 
mystery  which,  once  received  as  an  article  of  faith,  serves  to 
unlock  many  a  difficulty,  but  which  is  itself  wholly  irreducible 
by  the  naman  intellect, — I  have  been  sometimes  involuntarily 
led  to  think  of  her  ingenious  but  not  very  sound  argumenta- 
tion on  the  fall  of  the  pig.  It  is  dangerous  to  attempt  ex. 
plaining,  in  the  theological  province,  what  in  reality  cannot  be 


<TK,  the  story  of  my  education.  175 

explained.  Some  weak  abortion  of  the  human  reason  is  al- 
ways substituted,  in  the  attempt,  for  some  profound  mystery 
in  the  moral  government  of  God ;  and  men  ill  grounded  in 
the  faith  are  led  to  confound  the  palpable  abortion  with  the 
inscrutable  mystery,  and  are  injured  in  consequence. 

I  succeeded  in  getting  a  bed  in  the  mansion-house,  without, 
like  Marsyas  of  old,  perilling  my  skin  ;  and  though  there  was 
but  little  of  interest  in  the  immediate  neighborhood,  and  not 
much  to  be  enjoyed  within  doors, — for  I  could  procure  neither 
books  nor  congenial  companionship, — with  the  assistance  of 
my  pencil  and  sketch-book  I  got  over  my  leisure  hours  toler- 
ably well.  My  new  friend  Isabel  would  have  given  me  as 
much  of  her  conversation  as  I  liked ;  for  there  was  many  a 
point  on  which  she  had  to  consult  me,  and  many  a  mystery  to 
state,  and  secret  to  communicate ;  but,  though  always  interest- 
ed in  her  company,  I  was  also  always  pained,  and  invariably 
quitted  her,  after  each  lengthened  tete-a-tete,  in  a  state  of  low 
spirits,  which  I  found  it  difficult  to  shake  off.  There  seems  to 
be  something  peculiarly  unwholesome  in  the  society  of  a  strong- 
minded  maniac ;  and  so  I  contrived  as  much  as  possible — not 
a  little,  at  times,  to  her  mortification — to  avoid  her.  For 
hours  together,  however,  I  have  seen  her  perfectly  sane ;  and 
on  these  occasions  she  used  to  speak  much  about  her  brother, 
for  whom  she  entertained  a  high  veneration,  and  gave  me  many 
anecdotes  regarding  him,  not  uninteresting  in  themselves,  which 
she  told  remarkably  well.  Some  of  these  my  memory  still  re- 
tains. "  There  were  two  classes  of  men,"  she  has  said,  "  for 
whom  he  had  a  special  regard, — Christian  men  of  consistent 
character ;  and  men  who,  though  they  made  no  profession  of 
religion,  were  honest  in  their  dealings,  and  of  kindly  disposi 
tions  And  with  people  of  this  latter  kind  he  used  to  have  a 
great  deal  of  kindly  intercourse,  cheerful  enough  at  times, — 
for  he  could  both  make  a  joke  and  take  one, — but  which  usu 
ally  did  his  friends  good  in  the  end.  So  long  as  my  father 
and  mother  lived,  he  used  to  travel  across  the  country  once 
every  year  to  pay  them  a  visit;  and  he  was  accompanied,  on 
ore  of  these  journeys,  by  one  of  this  less  religious  class  of  his 


176  MY  SCHOOLS  AND  SCHOOLMASTERS; 

parishioners,  who  had,  however,  a  great  regard  for  him,  and 
whom  he  liked,  in  turn,  for  his  blunt  honesty  and  obliging  dis- 
position. They  had.  baited  for  some  time  at  a  house  in  the 
outer  skirts  of  my  brother's  parish,  where  there  was  a  child 
to  baptize,  and  where,  I  fear,  Donald  must  have  got  an  extra 
dram  ;  for  he  was  very  argumentative  all  the  evening  after  ; 
and  finding  he  could  not  agree  with  my  brother  on  any  one 
subject,  he  suffered  him  to  shoot  a-head  for  a  few  hundred 
yards,  and  did  not  again  come  up  with  him,  until,  in  passing 
through  a  thick  clump  of  natural  wood,  he  found  him  standing, 
lost  in  thought,  before  a  singularly-shaped  tree.  Donald  had 
never  seen  such  a  strange  looking  tree  in  all  his  days  before. 
The  lower  part  of  it  was  twisted  in  and  out,  and  backwards 
and  forwards,  like  an  ill-made  cork-screw  ;  while  the  higher 
shot  straight  upwards,  direct  as  a  line,  and  its  taper  top  seem- 
ed like  a  finger  pointing  at  the  sky.  '  Come,  tell  me,  Donald,' 
said  my  brother,  '  what  you  think  this  tree  is  like  V  '  Indeed 
I  kenna,  Mr.  Lachlan,'  replied  Donald ;  '  but  if  you  let  me 
tak'  that  straight  bit  affthe  tap  o't,  it  will  be  gey  an'  like  the 
worm  o'  a  whisky  still.'  '  But  I  cannot  want  the  straight  bit,' 
said  my  brother ;  '  the  very  pith  and  point  of  my  comparison 
lies  in  the  straight  bit.  One  of  the  old  fathers  would  perhaps 
have  said,  Donald,  that  the  tree  resembled  the  course  of  the 
Christian.  His  early  progress  has  turns  and  twists  in  it,  just 
like  the  lower  part  of  that  tree ;  one  temptation  draws  him  to 
the  left, — another  to  the  right :  his  upwrard  course  is  a  crooked 
one  ;  but  it  is  an  upward  course  for  all  that ;  for  he  has,  like 
the  tree,  the  principle  of  sky-directed  growth  within  him  :  the 
disturbing  influences  weaken  as  grace  strengthens  and  appetite 
and  passion  decay  ;  and  so  the  early  part  of  his  career  is  not 
more  like  the  warped  and  twisted  trunk  of  that  tree,  than  his 
latter  years  resemble  its  taper  top.  He  shoots  off  heavenward 
in  a  straight  line.'  "  Such  is  a  specimen  of  the  anecdotes  of 
this  poor  woman.  I  saw  her  once  afterwards,  though  for  only 
a  short  time ;  when  she  told  me  that,  though  people  could  not 
understand  us,  there  was  meaning  in  both  her  thoughts  and 
in  mine  ;  aid  some  years  subsequently,  when  I  was  engaged 


177 

as  a  journeyman  mason  in  the  south  of  Scotland,  she  walked 
twenty  miles  to  pay  my  mother  a  visit,  and  staid  with  her  for 
several  days.  Her  death  was  a  melancholy  one.  When 
fording  the  river  Conon  in  one  of  her  wilder  moods,  she  was 
swept  away  by  the  stream  and  drowned,  and  her  body  cast 
upon  the  bank  a  day  or  two  after. 

Our  work  finished  at  this  place,  my  master  and  I  returned 
to  Conon-side  on  a  Saturday  evening,  where  we  found  twenty- 
four  workmen  crowded  in  a  rustic  corn-kiln,  open  from  gable 
to  gable,  and  not  above  thirty  feet  in  length.  A  row  of  rude 
beds,  formed  of  undressed  slabs,  ran  along  the  sides ;  and 
against  one  of  the  gables  there  blazed  a  line  of  fires,  with  what 
are  known  as  masons'  setting-irons  stuck  into  the  stone-work 
behind,  for  suspending  over  them  the  pots  used  in  cooking  the 
food  of  the  squad.  The  scene,  as  we  entered,  was  one  of  wild 
confusion.  A  few  of  the  soberer  workmen  were  engaged  in 
"  baking  and  firing"  oaten  cakes,  and  a  few  more  occupied, 
with  equal  sobriety,  in  cooking  their  evening  porridge ;  but  in 
front  of  the  building  there  was  a  wild  party  of  apprentices,  who 
were  riotously  endeavoring  to  prevent  a  Highland  shepherd 
from  driving  his  flock  past  them,  by  shaking  their  aprons  at 
the  affrighted  animals ;  and  a  party  equally  bent  on  amuse- 
ment inside  were  joining  with  burlesque  vehemence  in  a  song 
which  one  of  the  men,  justly  proud  of  his  musical  talents,  had 
just  struck  up.  Suddenly  the  song  ceased,  and  with  wild  up- 
roar a  bevy  of  some  eight  or  ten  workmen  burst  out  into  the 
green  in  full  pursuit  of  a  squat  little  fellow,  who  had,  they 
said,  insulted  the  singer.  The  cry  rose  wild  and  high,  "  A 
ramming !  a  ramming !"  The  little  fellow  was  seized  and 
thrown  down  ;  and  five  men — one  holding  his  head,  and  one 
stationed  at  each  arm  and  leg — proceeded  to  execute  on  his 
body  the  stern  behests  of  barrack-law.  He  was  poised  like  an 
ancient  battering-ram,  and  driven  endlong  against  the  wall  of 
the  kiln, — that  important  part  of  his  person  coming  in  violent 
contact  with  the  masonry,  "  where,"  according  to  Butler,  "  a 
kick  hurts  honor"  very  much.  After  the  third  blow,  how- 
ever, he  was  released,  and  the  interrupted  song  went  on  as 


178  MY  SCHOOLS  AND  SCHOOLMASTERS  ; 

before.  I  was  astonished,  and  somewhat  dismayed,  by  this  spe- 
cimen of  barrack-life  ;  but,  getting  quietly  inside  the  building, 
I  succeeded  in  cooking  for  my  uncle  and  myself  some  porridge 
over  one  of  the  unoccupied  fires,  and  then  stole  off,  as  early 
as  I  could,  to  my  lair  in  a  solitary  hay-loft, — for  there  was  no 
room  for  us  in  the  barrack  ;  where,  by  the  judicious  use  of  a 
little  sulphur  and  mercury,  I  succeeded  in  freeing  my  master 
from  the  effects  of  the  strange  bed-fellowship  which  our  re- 
cent misery  had  made,  and  of  preserving  myself  from  infec 
tion.  The  following  Sabbath  was  a  day  of  quiet  rest ;  and  1 
commenced  the  labors  of  the  week,  disposed  to  think  that  my 
lot,  though  rather  a  rough  one,  was  not  altogether  unendura- 
ble ;  and  that,  even  were  it  worse  than  it  was,  it  would  be  at 
once  wise  and  manly,  seeing  that  winter  would  certainly  come, 
cheerfully  to  acquiesce  in  and  bear  up  under  it. 

I  had,  in  truth,  entered  a  school  altogether  new, — at  times, 
as  I  have  just  shown,  a  singularly  noisy  and  uproarious  one, 
for  it  was  a  school  without  master  or  monitor ;  but  its  occa- 
sional lessons  were,  notwithstanding,  eminently  worthy  of  be- 
ing scanned.  All  know  that  there  exists  such  a  thing  as  pro- 
fessional character.  On  some  men,  indeed,  nature  imprints  so 
strongly  the  stamp  of  individuality,  that  the  feebler  stamp  of 
circumstance  and  position  fails  to  impress  them.  Such  cases, 
however,  must  always  be  regarded  as  exceptional.  On  the 
average  masses  of  mankind,  the  special  employments  which 
they  pursue,  or  the  kinds  of  business  which  they  transact,  have 
the  effect  of  moulding  them  into  distinct  classes,  each  of  which 
bears  an  artificially  induced  character  peculiarly  its  own. 
Clergymen,  as  such,  differ  from  merchants  and  soldiers,  and 
all  three  from  lawyers  and  physicians.  Each  of  these  profess- 
ions has  long  borne  in  our  literature,  and  in  common  opinion 
a  character  so  clearly  appreciable  by  the  public  generally,  that 
when  truthfully  reproduced  in  some  new  work  of  fiction,  or 
exemplified  by  some  transaction  in  real  life,  it  is  at  once  recog- 
nized as  marked  by  the  genuine  class-traits  and  peculiarities. 
But  these  professional  characteristics  descend  much  lower  in 
the  scale  than  is  usually  supposed.    There  is  scarce  a  trade  or 


OR,    THE   STORY   OF   MY   EDUCATION.  179 


department  of  manual  labor  that  does  not  induce  its  own  set 
of  peculiarities, — peculiarities  which,  though  less  within  the 
range  of  the  observation  of  men  in  the  habit  of  recording  what 
they  remark,  are  not  less  real  than  those  of  the  man  of  physic 
or  of  law.  The  barber  is  as  unlike  the  weaver,  and  the  tailor 
as  unlike  b  »th,  as  the  farmer  is  unlike  the  soldier,  or  as  either 
farmer  or  soldier  is  unlike  the  merchant,  lawyer  or  minister. 
And  it  is  only  on  the  same  sort  of  principle  that  all  men,  when 
seen  from  the  top  of  a  lofty  tower,  whether  they  be  tall  or 
short,  seem  of  the  same  stature,  that  these  differences  escape 
the  notice  of  men  in  the  higher  walks. 

Between  the  workmen  that  pass  sedentary  lives  within  doors, 
such  as  weavers  and  tailors,  and  those  who  labor  in  the  open 
air,  such  as  masons  and  ploughmen,  there  exists  a  grand  gen- 
eric difference.  Sedentary  mechanics  are  usually  less  con- 
tented than  laborious  ones;  and  as  they  almost  always  work 
in  parties,  and  as  their  comparatively  light,  though  often  long 
and  wearily-plied  employments  do  not  so  much  strain  their 
respiratory  organs  but  that  .they  can  keep  up  an  interchange 
of  idea  when  at  their  toils,  they  are  generally  much  better  able 
to  state  their  grievances,  and  much  more  fluent  in  speculating 
on  their  causes.  They  develop  more  freely  than  the  labor- 
ious out-of  door  workers  of  the  country,  and  present,  as  a  class, 
a  more  intelligent  aspect.  On  the  other  hand,  when  the  open- 
air  worker  does  so  overcome  his  difficulties  as  to  get  fairly 
developed,  he  is  usually  of  a  fresher  and  more  vigorous  type 
than  the  sedentary  one.  Burns,  Hogg,  Allan  Cunningham,  are 
the  literary  representatives  of  the  order  ;  and  it  will  be  found 
that  they  stand  considerably  in  advance  of  the  Thorns,  Bloom- 
fields,  and  Tannahills  that  represent  the  sedentary  workmen. 
The  silent,  solitary,  hard-toiled  men,  if  nature  has  put  no  better 
stuff  in  them  than  that  of  which  stump-orators  and  Chartist 
lecturers  are  made,  remain  silent,  repressed  by  their  circum- 
stances ;  but  if  of  a  higher  grade,  and  if  they  once  do  get  their 
mouths  fairly  opened,  they  speak  with  power,  and  bear  with 
them  into  our  literature  the  freshness  of  the  green  earth  and 
the  freedom  of  the  open  sky. 


180 

The  specific  peculiarities  induced  by  particular  professions 
are  not  less  marked  than  the  generic  ones.  How  different, 
for  instance,  the  character  of  the  sedentary  tailor,  as  such,  from 
that  of  the  equally  sedentary  barber  !  Two  imperfectly-taught 
young  lads,  of  not  more  than  the  average  intellect,  are  appren- 
ticed, the  one  to  the  hair-dresser,  the  other  to  the  fashionable 
clothes-maker,  of  a  large  village.  The  barber  has  to  entertain 
his  familiar  round  of  customers,  when  operating  upon  their 
heads  and  beards.  He  must  have  no  controversies  with  them  ; 
— that  might  be  disagreeable,  and  might  affect  his  command 
of  the  scissors  or  razor :  but  he  is  expected  to  communicate 
to  them  all  he  knows  of  the  gossip  of  the  place ;  and  as  each 
customer  supplies  him  with  a  little,  he  of  course  comes  to 
know  more  than  anybody  else.  And  as  his  light  and  easy 
work  lays  no  stress  upon  his  respiration,  in  course  of  time  he 
learns  to  be  a  fast  and  fluent  talker,  with  a  great  appetite  for 
news,  but  little  given  to  dispute.  He  acquires,  too,  if  his 
round  of  customers  be  good,  a  courteous  manner;  and  if  they 
be  in  large  proportion  Conservatives,  he  becomes,  in  all  prob- 
ability, a  Conservative,  too.  The  young  tailor  goes  through 
an  entirely  different  process.  He  learns  to  regard  dress  as 
the  most  important  of  all  earthly  things, — becomes  knowing  in 
cuts  and  fashions, — is  taught  to  appreciate,  in  a  way  no  other 
individual  can,  the  aspect  of  a  button,  or  the  pattern  of  a 
vest ;  and  as  his  work  is  cleanly,  and  does  not  soil  his  clothes, 
and  as  he  can  get  them  more  cheaply,  and  more  perfectly  in 
the  fashion  than  other  mechanics,  the  chances  are  ten  to  one 
that  he  turns  out  a  beau.  He  becomes  great  in  that  which  he 
regards  as  of  all  things  greatest, — dress.  A  young  tailor  may 
be  known  by  the  cut  of  his  coat  and  the  merits  of  his  panta- 
loons, among  all  other  workmen ;  and  as  even  fine  clothes  are 
not  enough  of  themselves,  it  is  necessary  that  he  should  also 
have  fine  manners ;  and  not  having  such  advantages  of  seeing 
polite  society  as  his  neighbor  the  barber,  his  gentlemanly 
manners  are  always  less  fine  than  grotesque.  Hence  more 
ridicule  of  tailors  among  working  men  than  of  any  other  class 
of  mechanics.     And  such — if  nature  has  sent  them  from  hei 


181 

hand  ordinary  men, — for  the  extraordinary  rise  above  all  the 
modifying  influences  of  profession — are  the  processes  through 
which  tailors  and  hair-dressers  put  on  their  distinctive  charac- 
ters as  such.  A  village  smith  hears  well  nigh  as  much  gossip 
as  a  village  barber ;  but  he  develops  into  an  entirely  different 
sort  of  man.  lie  is  not  bound  to  please  his  customers  by  his 
talk ;  nor  does  his  profession  leave  his  breath  free  enough  to 
talk  fluently  or  much ;  and  so  he  listens  in  grim  and  swarthy 
independence, — strikes  his  iron  while  it  is  hot, — and  when, 
after  thrusting  it  into  the  fire,  he  bends  himself  to  the  bellows, 
he  drops,  in  rude  phrase,  a  brief  judicial  remark,  and  again 
falls  sturdily  to  work.  Again,  the  shoemaker  may  be  deemed, 
in  the  merely  mechanical  character  of  his  profession,  near  of 
kin  to  the  tailor.  But  such  is  not  the  case.  He  has  to  work 
amid  paste,  wax,  oil,  and  blacking,  and  contracts  a  smell  of 
leather.  He  cannot  keep  himself  particularly  clean ;  and, 
although  a  nicely-finished  shoe  be  all  well  enough  in  its  way, 
there  is  not  much  about  it  on  which  conceit  can  build.  No 
man  can  set  up  as  a  beau  on  the  strength  of  a  prettily-shaped 
shoe ;  and  so  a  beau  the  shoemaker  is  not,  but,  on  the  con- 
trary, a  careless,  manly  fellow,  who,  when  not  overmuch 
devoted  to  Saint  Monday,  gains,  usually,  in  his  course  through 
life,  a  considerable  amount  of  sense.  Shoemakers  are  often 
in  large  proportions  intelligent  men  ;  and  Bloomfield,  the 
poet,  Gilford,  the  critic  and  satirist,  and  Carey,  the  mission- 
ary, must  certainly  be  regarded  as  thoroughly  respectable 
contributions  from  the  profession,  to  the  worlds  of  poetry, 
criticism  and  religion. 

The  professional  character  of  the  mason  varies  a  good  deal 
in  the  several  provinces  of  Scotland,  according  to  the  \arious 
circumstances  in  which  he  is  placed.  lie  is  in  general  a  blunt 
manly,  taciturn  fellow,  who,  without  much  of  the  Kadical  or 
Chartist  about  him,  especially  if  wages  be  good  and  employ- 
ment abundant,  rarely  touches  his  hat  to  a  gentleman.  His 
employment  is  less  purely  mechanical  than  many  others :  he 
is  not  like  a  man  carelessly  engaged  in  pointing  needles  or 
fashioning  pin-heads.     On  the  contrary,  every  stone  he  lays  or 


182  MY   SCHOOLS  AND   SCHOOLMASTERS 

hews  demands  the  exercise  of  a  certain  amount  of  judgment 
for  itself;  and  so  he  caaaot  wholly  suffer  his  mind  to  fall 
asleep  over  his  work.  When  engaged,  too,  in  erecting  some 
fine  building,  he  always  experiences  a  degree  of  interest  in 
marking  the  effect  of  the  design  developing  itself  piecemeal, 
and  growing  up  under  his  hands ;  and  so  he  rarely  wearies  of 
what  he  is  doing.  Further,  his  profession  has  this  advantage, 
that  it  educates  his  sense  of  sight.  Accustomed  to  ascertain  the 
straightness  of  lines  at  a  glance,  and  to  cast  his  eye  along  plane 
walls,  or  the  mouldings  of  entablatures  or  architraves,  in  order 
to  determine  the  rectitude  of  the  masonry,  he  acquires  a  sort 
of  mathematical  precision  in  determining  the  true  bearings  and 
position  of  objects,  and  is  usually  found,  when  admitted  into 
a  rifle-club,  to  equal,  without  previous  practice,  its  second-rate 
shots.  He  only  falls  short  of  its  first-rate  ones,  because  unin- 
itiated by  the  experience  of  his  profession  in  the  mystery  of 
the  parabolic  curve,  he  fails,  in  taking  aim,  to  make  the  proper 
allowance  for  it.  The  mason  is  almost  always  a  silent  man  : 
the  strain  on  his  respiration  is  too  great,  when  he  is  actively 
employed,  to  leave  the  necessary  freedom  to  the  organs  of 
speech ;  and  so  at  least  the  provincial  builder  or  stone-cutter 
rarely  or  never  becomes  a  democratic  orator.  I  have  met 
with  exceptional  cases  in  the  larger  towns ;  but  they  were  the 
result  of  individual  idiosyncrasies,  developed  in  clubs  and 
taverns,  and  were  not  professional. 

It  is,  however,  with  the  character  of  our  north-country 
masons  that  I  have  at  present  chiefly  to  do.  Living  in  small 
villages,  or  in  cottages  in  the  country,  they  can  very  rarely 
procure  employment  in  the  neighborhood  of  their  dwellings, 
and  so  they  are  usually  content  to  regard  these  as  simply  their 
homes  for  the  winter  and  earlier  spring  months,  when  they 
have  nothing  to  do,  and  to  remove  for  work  to  other  parts  of 
the  country,  where  bridges,  or  harbors,  or  farm-steadings,  are 
in  the  course  of  building, — to  be  subjected  there  to  the  influ- 
ences of  what  is  known  as  the  barrack,  or  rather  bothy  life. 
These  barracks  or  bothies  are  almost  always  of  the  most  miser- 
ble  description.     I  have  lived  in  hovels  that  were  invariab'.y 


183 

flooded  in  wet  weather  by  the  overflowings  of  the  neighboring 
swamps,  and  through  whose  roofs  I  could  tell  the  hour  at  night, 
by  marking  froir.  my  bed  the  stars  that  were  passing  over  the 
openings  along  the  ridge :  I  have  resided  in  other  dwellings 
of  iither  higher  pretensions,  in  which  I  have  been  awakened 
during  every  heavier  night-shower,  by  the  rain  drops  splash- 
ing upon  my  face  where  I  lay  a-bed.  I  remember  that  Uncle 
James,  in  urging  me  not  to  become  a  mason,  told  me  that  a 
neighboring  laird,  when  asked  why  he  left  a  crazy  old  build 
ing  standing  beside  a  group  of  neat  modern  ofnces,  informed 
the  querist  that  it  was  not  altogether  through  bad  taste  the 
hovel  was  spared,  but  from  the  circumstance  that  he  found  it 
of  great  convenience  every  time  his  speculations  brought  a 
drove  of  pigs  or  a  squad  of  masons  the  way.  And  my  after 
experience  showed  me  that  the  story  might  not  be  in  the  least 
apocryphal,  and  that  masons  had  reason  at  times  for  not 
touching  their  hats  to  gentlemen. 

In  these  barracks  the  food  is  of  the  plainest  and  coarsest 
description  :  oatmeal  forms  its  staple,  with  milk,  when  milk 
can  be  had,  which  is  not  always  ;  and  as  the  men  have  to  cook 
by  turns,  with  only  half  an  hour  or  so  given  them  in  which  to 
light  a  fire,  and  prepare  the  meal  for  a  dozen  or  twenty  asso- 
ciates, the  cooking  is  invariably  an  exceedingly  rough  and  sim- 
ple affair.  I  have  known  mason-parties  engaged  in  the  central 
Highlands  in  building  bridges,  not  unfrequently  reduced,  by 
a  tract  of  wet  weather,  that  soaked  their  only  fuel  the  turf,  and 
rendered  it  incombustible,  to  the  extremity  of  eating  their 
oatmeal  raw,  and  merely  moistened  by  a  little  water,  scooped 
by  the  hand  from  a  neighboring  brook.  I  have  oftener  than  once 
seen  our  own  supply  of  salt  fail  us ;  and  after  relief  had  been  af- 
forded by  a  Highland  smuggler — for  there  was  much  smuggling 
in  salt  in  those  days,  ere  the  repeal  of  the  duties — I  have  heard 
a  complaint  from  a  young  fellow  regarding  the  hardness  of  our 
fare,  at  once  checked  by  a  comrade's  asking  him  whether  he  was 
not  an  ungrateful  dog  to  grumble  in  that  way,  seeing  that,  after 
living  on  fresh  poultices  for  a  week,  we  had  actually  that  morn- 


184  MY  SCHOOLS  AND  SCHOOLMASTEKS  ; 

ing  got  porridge  with  salt  in  it.  One  marked  effect  of  the 
annual  change  which  the  north-country  mason  had  to  undergo, 
from  a  life  of  domestic  comfort  to  a  life  of  hardship  in  the  bothy, 
if  he  has  not  passed  middle  life,  is  a  great  apparent  increase  in 
his  animal  spirits.  At  home  he  is  in  all  probability  a  quiet, 
rather  dull-looking  personage,  not  much  given  to  laugh  or 
joke ;  whereas  in  the  bothy,  if  the  squad  be  a  large  one,  he 
becomes  wild  and  a  humorist, — laughs  much,  and  becomes  in- 
genious in  playing  off  pranks  on  his  fellows.  As  in  all  other 
communities,  there  are  certain  laws  recognized  in  the  barrack, 
as  useful  for  controlling  at  least  its  younger  members  the  ap- 
prentices ;  but  in  the  general  tone  of  merriment,  even  these 
lose  their  character,  and  ceasing  to  be  a  terror  to  evil-doers, 
become  in  the  execution  mere  occasions  of  mirth.  I  never  in 
all  my  experience,  saw  a  serious  punishment  inflicted.  Shortly 
after  our  arrival  at  Conon-side,  my  master  chancing  to  remark 
that  he  had  not  wrought  as  a  journeyman  for  twenty -five  years 
before,  was  voted  a  "  ramming,"  for  taking,  as  was  said,  such 
high  ground  with  his  brother  workmen ;  but,  though  sentence 
was  immediately  executed,  they  dealt  gently  with  the  old  man, 
who  had  good  sense  enough  to  acquiesce  in  the  whole  as  a 
joke.  And  yet,  amid  all  this  wild  merriment  and  license, 
there  was  not  a  workman  who  did  not  regret  the  comforts  of 
his  quiet  home,  and  long  for  the  happiness  which  was,  he  felt, 
to  be  enjoyed  only  there.  It  has  been  long  known  that  gaiety 
is  not  solid  enjoyment ;  but  that  the  gaiety  should  indicate 
little  else  than  the  want  of  solid  enjoyment,  is  a  circumstance 
not  always  suspected.  My  experience  of  barrack-life  has 
enabled  me  to  receive  without  hesitation  what  has  been  said  of 
the  occasional  merriment  of  slaves  in  America  and  elsewhere, 
and  fully  to  credit  the  often-repeated  statement  that  the  abject 
serfs  of  despotic  Governments  laugh  more  than  the  subjects  of 
a  free  country.  Poor  fellows !  If  the  British  people  were  as 
unhappy  as  slaves  or  serfs,  they  would,  I  dare  say,  learn  in  time 
to  be  quite  as  merry.  There  are,  however,  two  circumstances 
that  <w>rve  to  prevent  the  bothy  life  of  the  north-country  mason 


OR,    THE   STORY   OF   MY   EDUCATION.  185 

from  essentially  injuring  his  character  in  the  way  it  almost 
never  fails  to  injure  that  of  the  farm-servant.  As  he  has  to 
calculate  on  being  part  of  every  winter,  and  almost  every 
spring,  unemployed,  he  is  compelled  to  practise  a  self-denying 
economy,  the  effect  of  which,  when  not  carried  to  the  extreme 
of  a  miserly  narrowness,  is  always  good  ;  and  Hallow-day  re- 
turns him  every  season  to  the  humanizing  influences  of  his 
home 


186  MT  SCHOOLS  AND  SCHOOLMASTERS; 


CHAPTER    X. 


"The  muse,  nae  poet  ever  fand  her, 
Till  by  himsel'  he  learned  to  wander 
Adown  some  trottin'  burn's  meander, 

An'  no  think  lang: 

O,  sweet  to  muse,  and  pensive  ponder 

A  heart-felt  sang!" 

Burns. 

There  are  delightful  walks  in  the  immediate  neighborhood 
of  Conon-side;  and  as  the  workmen — engaged,  as  I  have 
said,  on  day's  wages — immediately  ceased  working  as  the  hour 
of  six  arrived,  I  had,  during  the  summer  months,  from  three 
to  four  hours  to  myself  every  evening,  in  which  to  enjoy  them. 
The  great  hollow  occupied  by  the  waters  of  the  Cromarty 
Frith  divides  into  two  valleys  at  its  upper  end,  just  where  the 
sea  ceases  to  flow.  There  is  the  valley  of  the  Pefter,  and  the 
valley  of  the  Conon  ;  and  a  tract  of  broken  hills  lies  between, 
formed  by  the  great  conglomerate  base  of  the  Old  Red  Sys- 
tem. The  conglomerate,  always  a  picturesque  deposit,  termi- 
nates some  four  or  five  miles  higher  up  the  valley,  in  a  range 
of  rough  precipices,  as  bold  and  abrupt,  though  they  front  the 
interior  of  the  country,  as  if  they  formed  the  terminal  barrier 
of  some  exposed  sea-coast.  A  few  straggling  pines  crest  their 
summits ;  and  the  noble  woods  of  Brahan  Castle,  the  ancient 
seat  of  the  Earls  of  Seaforth,  sweep  downwards  from  their  base 


187 

to  the  margin  of  the  Conon.  On  our  own  side  of  the  river, 
the  more  immature  but  fresh  and  thickly-clustered  woods  of 
Conon  House  rose  along  the  banks ;  and  I  was  delighted  to 
find  among  them  a  ruinous  chapel  and  ancient  burying-ground, 
occupying,  in  a  profoundly  solitary  corner,  a  little  green  hil- 
lock, once  an  island  of  the  river,  but  now  left  dry  by  the  grad- 
ual wear  of  the  channel,  and  the  consequent  fall  of  the  water 
to  a  lower  level.  A  few  broken  walls  rose  on  the  highest  peak 
of  the  eminence;  the  slope  was  occupied  by  the  little  mossy 
hillocks  and  sorely-lichened  tombstones  that  mark  the  ancient 
grave-yard;  and  among  the  tombs  immediately  beside  the 
ruin  there  stood  a  rustic  dial,  with  its  iron  gnomon  worn  to 
an  oxydized  film,  and  green  wi^h  weather-stains  and  moss. 
And  around  this  little  lonely  yard  sprang  the  young  wood, 
thick  as  a  hedge,  but  just  open  enough  towards  the  west  to 
admit,  in  slant  lines  along  the  tombstones  and  the  ruins,  the 
red  level  light  of  the  setting  sun. 

I  greatly  enjoyed  these  evening  walks.  From  Conon-side 
as  a  centre,  a  radius  of  six  miles  commands  many  objects  of 
interest; — Strathpeffer,  with  its  mineral  springs, — Castle  Leod, 
with  its  ancient  trees,  among  the  rest,  one  of  the  largest  Span- 
ish chestnuts  in  Scotland, — Knockferrel,  with  its  vitrified 
fort, — the  old  tower  of  Fairburn, — the  old  though  somewhat 
modernized  tower  of  Kinkell, — the  Brahan  policies,  with  the 
old  Castle  of  the  Seaforths, — the  old  Castle  of  Kilcoy, — and 
the  Druidic  circles  of  the  moor  of  Red-castle.  In  succession 
I  visited  them  all,  with  many  a  sweet  scene  besides ;  but  I 
found  that  my  four  hours,  when  the  visit  involved,  as  it  some- 
times did,  twelve  miles  walking,  left  me  little  enough  time  to 
examine  and  enjoy.  A  half-holiday  every  week  would  be  a 
mighty  boon  to  the  working  man  who  has  acquired  a  taste  for 
the  quiet  pleasures  of  intellect,  and  either  cultivates  an  affec- 
tion for  natural  objects,  or,  according  to  the  antiquary,  "  loves 
to  look  upon  what  is  old."  My  recollections  of  this  rich  tract 
of  country,  with  its  woods,  and  towers,  and  noble  river,  seem 
as  if  bathed  in  the  red  light  of  gorgeous  sunsets.     Its  uneven 


188 

plain  ol  Old  Red  Sandstone  leans,  at  a  few  miles  distance, 
against  dark  Highland  hills  of  schistose  gneiss,  that,  at  the 
line  where  they  join  on  to  the  green  Lowlands,  are  low  and 
tame,  but  sweep  upwards  into  an  alpine  region,  where  the  old 
Scandinavian  Flora  of  the  country, — that  Flora  which  alone 
flourished  in  the  times  of  its  boulder  clay, — still  maintains  its 
place  against  the  Germanic  invaders  which  cover  the  lower 
grounds,  as  the  Celt  of  old  used  to  maintain  exactly  the  same 
ground  against  the  Saxon.  And  at  the  top  of  a  swelling  moor 
just  beneath  where  the  hills  rise  rugged  and  black,  stands  the 
pale  tall  tower  of  Fairburn,  that,  seen  in  the  gloamin',  as  I 
have  often  seen  it,  seems  a  ghastly  spectre  of  the  past,  looking 
from  out  its  solitude  at  the  changes  of  the  present.  The  free- 
booter, its  founder,  had  at  first  built  it,  for  the  greater  security, 
without  a  door,  and  used  to  climb  into  it  through  the  window 
of  an  upper  story  by  a  ladder.  But  now  unbroken  peace 
brooded  over  its  shattered  ivy -bound  walls,  and  ploughed  fields 
were  creeping  up  year  by  year  along  the  moory  slope  on  which 
it  stood,  until  at  length  all  became  green,  and  the  dark  heath 
disappeared.  There  is  a  poetic  age  in  the  life  of  most  indi- 
viduals, as  certainly  as  in  the  history  of  most  nations ;  and  a 
very  happy  age  it  is.  I  had  now  fully  entered  on  it;  and  en- 
joyed, in  my  lonely  walks  along  the  Conon,  a  happiness  ample 
enough  to  compensate  for  many  a  long  hour  of  toil,  and  many 
a  privation.  I  have  quoted,  as  the  motto  of  this  chapter,  an 
exquisite  verse  from  Burns.  There  is  scarce  another  stanza 
in  the  wide  round  of  British  literature  that  so  faithfully  de- 
scribes the  mood  which,  regularly  as  the  evening  came,  and 
after  I  had  buried  myself  in  the  thick  woods,  or  reached  some 
bosky  recess  of  the  river  bank,  used  to  come  stealing  over  me, 
and  in  which  I  have  felt  my  heart  and  intellect  as  thoroughly 
:.n  keeping  with  the  scene  and  hour  as  the  still  woodland  pool 
beside  me,  whose  surface  reflected  in  the  calm  every  tree  and 
rock  that  rose  around  it,  and  every  hue  of  the  heavens  above. 
And  yet  the  mood,  though  a  sweet,  was  also,  as  the  poet  ex- 
pj  esses  it,  a  pensive  one :  it  was  steeped  in  the  happy  melan- 


OR,    THE   STORY   OF   MY   EDUCATION.  189 

choly  sung  so  truthfully  by  an  elder  bard,  who  also  must  nave 
entered  deeply  into  the  feeling. 

"  When  I  goe  musing  all  alone, 
Thinking  of  divers  things  foreknowne, — 
When  I  builde  castles  in  the  air, 
Voide  of  sorrow  and  voide  of  care, 
Pleasing  myself  with  phantasms  sweet, — 
Methinks  the  time  runs  very  fleet; 
All  my  joyes  to  this  are  follie  ; — 
None  soe  sweet  as  melanchollie. 

When  to  myself  I  sit  and  smile, 
With  |  leasing  thoughts  the  time  beguile, 
By  a  brook  side  or  wood  soe  green, 
Unheard,  unsought  for,  and  unseen, 
A  thousand  pleasures  dog  me  blesse, 
And  crowne  my  soul  with  happiness ; 
All  my  joyes  to  this  are  follie  ; — 
None  soe  sweet  as  melanchollie." 

When  I  remember  how  my  happiness  was  enhanced  by 
every  little  bird  that  burst  out  into  sudden  song  among  the 
trees,  and  then  as  suddenly  became  silent,  or  by  every  bright- 
scaled  fish  that  went  darting  through  the  topaz-colored  depths 
of  the  water,  or  rose  for  a  moment  over  its  calm  surface, — how 
the  blue  sheets  of  hyacinths  that  carpeted  the  openings  in  the 
wood  delighted  me,  and  every  golden-tinted  cloud  that  gleam- 
ed over  the  setting  sun,  and  threw  its  bright  flush  on  the  river, 
seemed  to  inform  the  heart  of  a  heaven  beyond, — I  marvel,  in 
looking  over  the  scraps  of  verse  produced  at  the  time,  to  find 
how  little  of  the  sentiment  in  which  I  so  luxuriated,  or  of  the 
nature  which  I  so  enjoyed,  found  their  way  into  them.  But 
what  Wordsworth  well  terms  "  the  accomplishment  of  verse," 
given  to  but  few,  is  as  distinct  from  the  poetic  faculty  vouch- 
safed to  many,  as  the  ability  of  relishing  exquisite  music  is 
distinct  from  the  power  of  producing  it.  Nay,  there  are  cases 
n  which  the  "  faculty"  may  be  very  high,  and  yet  the  "  ac 
complishment"  comparatively  low,  or  altogether  awanting.  I 
have  been  told  by  the  late  Dr.  Chalmers,  whose  Astronomical 
Discourses  form  one  of  the  finest  philosophical  poems  in  any 
language,  that  he  never  succeeded  in   achieving  a  readable 


190  MY  SCHOOLS  AND  SCHOOLMASTERS; 

stanza ;  and  Dr.  Thomas  Brown,  whose  metaphysics  glow  with 
poetry,  might,  though  le  produced  whole  volumes  of  verse, 
have  said  nearly  the  same  thing  of  himself.  But,  like  the 
Metaphysician,  who  would  scarce  have  published  his  verses 
unless  he  had  thought  them  good  ones,  my  rhymes  pleased  me 
at  this  period,  and  for  some  time  after,  wonderfully  well :  they 
came  to  be  so  associated  in  my  mind  with  the  scenery  amid 
which  they  were  composed,  and  the  mood  which  it  rarely  fail- 
ed of  inducing,  that,  though  they  neither  breathed  the  mood 
nor  reflected  the  scenery,  they  always  suggested  both ;  on  the 
principle,  I  suppose,  that  a  pewter  spoon,  bearing  the  London 
stamp,  suggested  to  a  crew  of  poor  weather-beaten  sailors  in 
one  of  the  islands  of  the  Pacific,  their  far-distant  home  and  its 
enjoyments.  One  of  the  pieces  suggested  at  this  time  I  shall, 
however,  venture  on  submitting  to  the  reader.  The  few  simple 
thoughts  which  it  embodies  arose  in  the  solitary  churchyard 
among  the  woods,  beside  the  aged  lichen-encrusted  dial-stone. 

ON   SEEING   A    SUN-DIAL    IN   A    CHURCHYARD. 

Gray  dial-stone,  I  fain  would  know 

What  motive  placed  thee  here, 
Where  darkly  opes  the  frequent  grave, 

And  rests  the  frequent  bier  ; 
Ah  !  bootless  creeps  the  dusky  shade, 

Slow  o'er  thy  figured  plain : 
When  mortal  life  has  passed  away, 

Time  counts  his  hours  in  vain. 

As  sweep  the  clouds  o'er  ocean's  breast, 

When  shrieks  the  wintry  wind, 
So  doubtful  thoughts,  gray  dial-stone, 

Come  sweeping  o'er  my  mind. 
I  think  of  what  could  place  thee  here, 

Of  those  beneath  thee  laid  ; 
And  ponder  if  thou  wer't  not  raised 

In  mockery  o'er  the  dead. 

Nay,  man,  when  on  life's  stage  they  fret, 

May  mock  his  fellow-men; 
In  sooth,  their  soberest  freaks  afford 

Rare  food  for  mockery  then. 


OK,   THE    STORY  OF  MY  EDUCATION.  191 

But  ah  !  when  passed  their  brief  sojourn, 

When  Heaven's  dread  doom  is  said, — 
Beats  there  the  human  heart  could  pour 

Light  mockeries  o'er  the  dead  ? 

The  fiend  unblest,  who  still  to  harm 

Directs  his  felon  power, 
May  ope  the  book  of  grace  to  him 

Whose  day  of  grace  is  o'er; 
But  never  sure  could  mortal  man, 

Whate'er  his  age  or  clime, 
Thus  raise,  in  mockery  o'er  the  dead, 

The  stone  that  measures  time. 

Gray  dial-stone,  I  fain  wonld  know 

What  motive  placed  thee  here, 
Where  sadness  heaves  the  frequent  sigh, 

And  drops  the  frequent  tear. 
Like  thy  carved  plain,  gray  dial-stone, 

Griefs  weary  mourners  be ; 
Dark  sorrow  metes  out  lime  to  them,— 

Dark  shade  marks  time  on  thee. 

I  know  it  now  :  wer't  thou  not  plac'd 

To  catch  the  eye  of  him 
To  whom,  through  glistening  tears,  earth's  gaud* 

Worthless  appear,  and  dim? 
We  think  of  time  when  time  has  fled, 

The  friend  our  tears  deplore ; 
The  God  whom  pride-swollen  hearts  deny, 

Grief-humbled  hearts  adore. 

Gray  stone,  o'er  thee  the  lazy  night 

Passes  untold  away ; 
Nor  were  it  thine  at  noon  to  teach, 

If  failed  the  solar  ray. 
In  death's  dark  night,  gray  dial-stone, 

Cease  all  the  works  of  men  ; 
In  life,  if  Heaven  withhold  its  aid, 

Bootless  these  works  and  vain. 

Gray  dial-stone  while  yet  thy  shade 

Points  out  those  hours  are  mine, — 
While  yet  at  early  morn  I  rise, 

And  rest  at  day's  decline, — 
Would  that  the  Sun  that  formed  thine^ 

His  bright  rays  beamed  on  me, 
That  I,  wise  for  the  final  day, 

Might  measure  time,  like  thee  I 


192  MY  SCHOOLS   AND  SCHOOLMASTEES  J 

These  were  happy  evenings, — all  the  more  happy  from  the 
circumstance  that  J  was  still  in  heart  and  appetite  a  boy,  and 
could  relish  as  much  as  ever,  when  their  season  came  on,  the 
wild  raspberries  of  the  Conon  Woods, — a  very  abundant  fruit 
in  that  part  of  the  country, — and  climb  as  lightly  as  ever,  to 
strip  the  guean-trees  of  their  wild  cherries.  When  the  river 
was  low,  I  used  to  wade  into  its  fords,  in  quest  of  its  pearl 
muscles  (Unto  Margaritiferus)  ;  and,  though  not  very  suc- 
cessful in  my  pearl-fishing,  it  was  at  least  something  to  see 
how  thickly  the  individuals  of  this  greatest  of  British  fresh- 
water molluscs  lay  scattered  among  the  pebbles  of  the  fords,  or 
to  mark  them  slowly  creeping  along  the  bottom, — when,  in 
consequence  of  prolonged  droughts,  the  current  had  so  mod- 
erated that  they  were  in  no  danger  of  being  swept  away, — 
each  on  its  large  white  foot,  with  its  valves  elevated  over  its 
back,  like  the  carpace  of  some  tall  tortoise.  I  found  occasion 
at  this  time  to  conclude,  that  the  Unio  of  our  river  fords  se- 
cretes pearls  so  much  more  frequently  than  the  Unionidce  and 
Anadonta  of  our  still  pools  and  lakes,  not  from  any  specific 
peculiarity  in  the  constitution  of  the  creature,  but  from  the 
effects  of  the  habitat  which  it  is  its  nature  to  choose.  It  re- 
ceives in  the  fords  and  shallows  of  a  rapid  river  many  a  rough 
blow  from  sticks  and  pebbles,  carried  down  in  times  of  flood, 
and  occasionally  from  the  feet  of  the  men  and  animals  that 
cross  the  stream  during  droughts ;  and  the  blows  induce  the 
morbid  secretions  of  which  pearls  are  the  result.  There  seems 
to  exist  no  inherent  cause  why  Anodon  Cygnea,  with  its  beau- 
tiful silvery  nacre, — as  bright  often,  and  always  more  delicate, 
than  that  of  Unio  Margaritiferus, — should  not  be  equally  pro- 
ductive of  pearls ;  but,  secure  from  violence  in  its  still  pools 
and  lakes,  and  unexposed  to  the  circumstances  that  provoke 
abnormal  secretions,  it  does  not  produce  a  single  pearl  for 
every  hundred  that  are  ripened  into  value  and  beauty  by  the 
exposed  current-tossed  Unionidce  of  our  rapid  mountain  rivers. 
AVould  that  hardship  and  suffering  bore  always  in  a  creature 
of  a  greatly  higher  family  similar  results,  and  that  the  hard 
buffets  dea"  \  him  by  fortune  in  the  rough  stream  of  life  could 


OR,   THE   STORY  OF  MY   EDUCATION.  193 

be  transmuted,  by  some  blessed  internal  predisposition  of  his 
nature,  into  pearls  of  great  price  ! 

It  formed  one  of  my  standing  enjoyments  at  this  time  to 
bathe,  as  the  sun  was  sinking  behind  the  woods,  in  the  deeper 
pools  of  the  Conon, — a  pleasure  which,  like  all  the  more  ex- 
citing pleasures  of  youth,  bordered  on  terror.  Like  that  of  the 
poet,  when  he  "  wantoned  with  the  breakers,"  and  the  "  fresh- 
ning  sea  made  them  a  terror,"  "  'twas  a  pleasing  fear."  But 
t  was  not  current  nor  freshening  eddy  that  rendered  it  such  ; 
I  had  acquired,  long  before,  a  complete  mastery  over  all  my 
motions  in  the  water,  and,  setting  out  from  the  shores  of  the 
Bay  of  Cromarty,  have  swam  round  vessels  in  the  roadstead, 
when,  among  the  many  boys  of  a  seaport  town,  not  more  than 
one  or  two  would  venture  to  accompany  me ;  but  the  poetic  age 
is  ever  a  credulous  one,  as  certainly  in  individuals  as  in  na- 
tions ;  the  old  fears  of  the  supernatural  may  be  modified  and 
etherealized,  but  they  continue  to  influence  it  ;  and  at  this 
period  the  Conon  still  took  its  place  among  the  haunted 
streams  of  Scotland.  There  was  not  a  river  in  the  Highlands 
that  used,  ere  the  erection  of  the  stately  bridge  in  our  neigh- 
borhood, to  sport  more  wantonly  with  human  life, — an  evi- 
dence, the  ethnographer  might  perhaps  say,  of  its  purely  Cel- 
tic origin ;  and  as  Superstition  has  her  figures  as  certainly  as 
Poesy,  the  perils  of  a  wild  mountain-born  stream,  flowing  be- 
tween thinly-inhabited  banks,  were  personified  in  the  beliefs 
of  the  people  by  a  frightful  goblin,  that  took  a  malignant  de- 
light in  luring  into  its  pools,  or  overpowering  in  its  fords,  the 
benighted  traveller.  Its  goblin,  the  "  water-wraith,"  used  to 
appear  as  a  tall  woman  dressed  in  green,  but  distinguished 
chiefly  by  her  withered,  meagre  countenance,  ever  distorted 
by  a  malignant  scowl.  I  knew  all  the  various  fords — always 
dangerous  ones — where  of  old  she  used  to  start,  it  was  said, 
out  of  the  river,  before  the  terrified  traveller,  to  point  at  him, 
as  in  derision,  with  her  skinny  finger,  or  to  beckon  him  in- 
vitingly on  ;  and  I  was  shown  the  very  tree  to  which  a  poor 
Highlander  had  clung,  when,  in  crossing  the  river  by  night, 
he  was  seized  by  thn  goblin,  and  from  which,  despite  of  his 


194  MY   SCHOOLS  AND  SCHOOLMASTERS  ; 

utmost  exertions,  though  assisted  by  a  young  lad,  his  compan 
ion,  ae  was  dragged  into  the  middle  of  the  current,  where  he 
perished.  And  when,  in  swimming  at  sunset  over  some  dark 
pool,  where  the  eye  failed  to  mark  or  the  foot  to  sound  the  dis- 
tant bottom,  the  twig  of  some  sunken  bush  or  tree  has  struck 
against  me  as  I  passed,  I  have  felt,  with  sudden  start,  as  if 
touched  by  the  cold,  bloodless  fingers  of  the  goblin. 

The  old  chapel  among  the  woods  formed  the  scene,  says  tra 
dition,  of  an  incident  similar  to  that  which  Sir  Walter  Scott 
relates  in  his  "  Heart  of  Mid-Lothian,"  when  borrowing,  as 
the  motto  of  the  chapter  in  which  he  describes  the  prepara- 
tions for  the  execution  of  Porteus,  from  an  author  rarely 
quoted, — the  Kelpie.  "  The  hour's  come,"  so  runs  the  ex- 
tract, "  but  not  the  man  ;" — nearly  the  same  words  which  the 
same  author  employs  in  his  "  Guy  Mannering,"  in  the  cave 
scene  between  Meg  Merrilies  and  Dirk  Hatterick.  "  There 
is  a  tradition,"  he  adds  in  the  accompanying  note,  "  that  while 
a  little  stream  was  swollen  into  a  torrent  by  recent  showers, 
the  discontented  voice  of  the  water-spirit  was  heard  to  pro- 
nounce these  words.  At  the  same  moment,  a  man  urged  on 
by  his  fate,  or,  in  Scottish  language,  /ay,  arrived  at  a  gallop, 
and  prepared  to  cross  the  water.  No  remonstrance  from  the 
bystanders  was  of  power  to  stop  him  ;  he  plunged  into  the 
stream,  and  perished."  So  far  Sir  Walter.  The  Ross-shire 
story  is  fuller,  and  somewhat  different  in  its  details.  On  a 
field  in  the  near  neighborhood  of  the  chapel,  now  laid  out 
into  the  gardens  of  Conon  House,  there  was  a  party  of  High- 
landers engaged  in  an  autumnal  day  at  noon,  some  two  or 
three  centuries  ago,  in  cutting  down  their  corn,  when  the 
boding  voice  of  the  wraith  was  heard  rising  from  the  Conon 
beneath, — "  The  hour's  come,  but  not  the  man."  Immediate- 
ly after,  a  courier  on  horseback  was  seen  spurring  down  the 
hill  in  hot  haste,  making  directly  for  what  is  known  as  a 
"  fause  ford,"  that  lies  across  the  stream,  just  opposite  the  old 
building,  in  the  form  of  a  rippling  bar,  which,  indicating  ap- 
parently, though  very  falsely,  little  depth  of  water,  is  flanked 
by  a  deep  black  pool  above  and  below.     The  Highlanders 


OR    THE  STORY  OF  MY   EDUCATION.  195 

spiang  forward  to  warn  him  of  his  danger,  and  keep  him  back  ; 
but  he  was  unoelieving  and  in  haste,  and  rode  express,  he 
said,  on  business  that  would  brook  no  delay  ;  and  as  for  the 
"  fause  ford,"  if  it  could  not  be  ridden,  it  could  be  swam ;  and, 
whether  by  riding  or  swimming,  he  was  resolved  on  getting 
across.  Determined,  however,  in  saving  him  in  his  own  de- 
spite, the  Highlanders  forced  him  from  his  horse,  and,  thrust- 
ing him  into  the  little  chapel,  locked  him  in  ;  and  then,  throw- 
ing open  the  door  when  the  fatal  hour  had  passed,  they  called 
him  that  he  might  now  pursue  his  journey.  But  there  was 
no  reply,  no  one  came  forth  ;  and  on  going  in,  they  found 
him  lying  cold  and  stiff,  with  his  face  buried  in  the  water  of  a 
small  stone  font.  He  had  fallen,  apparently,  in  a  fit,  athwart 
the  wall ;  and  his  predestined  hour  having  come,  he  was  suf- 
focated by  the  few  pints  of  water  in  the  projecting  font.  At 
this  time  the  stone  font  of  the  tradition — a  rude  trough,  little 
more  than  a  foot  in  diameter  either  way — was  still  to  be  seen 
among  the  ruins  ;  and,  like  the  veritable  cannon  in  the  Castle 
of  Udolpho,  beside  which,  according  to  Annette,  the  ghost 
used  to  take  its  stand,  it  imparted  by  its  solid  reality  a  degree 
of  authenticity  to  the  story  in  this  part  of  the  country,  which, 
if  unfurnished  with  a  "  local  habitation,"  as  in  Sir  Walter's 
note,  it  would  have  wanted.  Such  was  one  of  the  many 
stories  of  the  Conon  with  which  I  became  acquainted  at  a 
time  when  the  beliefs  they  exemplified  were  by  no  means  quite 
dead,  and  of  which  I  could  think  as  tolerably  serious  realities, 
when  lying  a-bed  all  alone  at  midnight,  the  solitary  inmate  of 
a  dreary  barrack,  listening  to  the  roar  of  the  Conon. 

Besides  the  long  evenings,  we  had  an  hour  to  breakfast,  and 
another  to  dinner.  Much  of  the  breakfast  hour  was  spent  in 
cooking  our  food  ;  but  as  a  bit  of  oaten  cake  and  a  draught 
of  milk  usually  served  us  for  the  mid-day  meal,  the  greater  part 
of  the  hour  assigned  to  it  was  available  for  the  purpose  of  rest 
or  amusement.  And  when  the  day  was  fine,  I  used  to  spend 
it  by  the  side  of  a  mossy  stream,  within  a  few  minutes  walk  of 
the  work-shed,  or  in  a  neighboring  planting,  beside  a  little 
irregular  1  x-han,  fringed  round  with  flags  and   rushes.     The 


196  MY  SCHOOLS  AND  SCHOOLMASTERS  ; 

mossy  stream,  black  in  its  deeper  pools,  as  if  it  were  a  rivulet 
of  tar,  contained  a  good  many  trout,  which  had  acquired  a  hue 
nearly  as  deep  as  its  own,  and  formed  the  very  negroes  of  their 
race.  They  were  usually  of  small  size, — for  the  stream  itself 
was  small ;  and,  though  little  countries  sometimes  produce  great 
men,  little  streams  rarely  produce  great  fish.  But  on  one  oc- 
casion, towards  the  close  of  autumn,  when  a  party  of  the 
younger  workmen  set  themselves,  in  a  frolic,  to  sweep  it  with 
torch  and  spear,  they  succeeded  in  capturing,  in  a  dark  alder- 
o'ershaded  pool,  a  monstrous  individual,  nearly  three  feet  in 
length,  and  proportionately  bulky,  with  a  snout  bent  over  the 
lower  jaw  at  its  symphysis,  like  the  beak  of  a  hawk,  and  as 
deeply  tinged  (though  with  more  of  brown  in  its  complexion) 
as  the  blackest  coal-fish  I  ever  saw.  It  must  have  been  a 
bull-trout,  a  visitor  from  the  neighboring  river  ;  but  we  all 
concluded  at  the  time,  from  the  extreme  dinginess  of  its  coat, 
that  it  had  lived  for  years  in  its  dark  pool,  a  hermit  apart  from 
its  fellows.  I  am  not  now,  however,  altogether  certain  that 
the  inference  was  a  sound  one.  Some  fishes,  like  some  men, 
have  a  wonderful  ability  of  assuming  the  colors  that  best  suit 
their  interests  for  the  time.  I  have  been  unable  to  determine 
whether  the  trout  was  one  of  these  conformists  ;  but  it  used  to 
strike  me  at  this  period  as  at  least  curious,  that  the  fishes  in 
even  the  lower  reaches  of  the  dark  little  rivulet  should  differ  so 
entirely  in  hue  from  those  of  the  greatly  clearer  Conon,  into 
which  its  peaty  waters  fall,  and  whose  scaly  denizens  are  of 
silvery  brightness.  No  fish  seems  to  possess  a  more  complete 
power  over  its  dingy  coat  than  a  very  abundant  one  in  the 
estuary  of  the  Conon, — the  common  flounder.  Standing  o  1 
the  bank,  I  have  startled  these  creatures  from  off  the  patch  of 
bottom  on  which  they  lay, — visible  to  only  a  very  sharp  eye, 
— by  pitching  a  small  pebble  right  over  them.  Was  the  patch 
a  pale  one, — for  a  minute  or  so  they  carried  its  pale  color  along 
with  them  into  some  darker  tract,  where  they  remained  dis- 
tinctly visible  from  the  contrast,  until,  gradually  acquiring  the 
deeper  hue,  they  again  became  inconspicuous.  But  if  startled 
back  to  the  same  pale  patch  from  which  they  had  set  out,  I 


197 

nave  then  seen  then  risible  for  a  minute  or  so,  from  their 
over-dark  tint,  until,  gradually  losing  it  in  turn,  they  paled 
down,  as  at  first,  to  the  color  of  the  lighter  ground.  An  old 
Highlander,  whose  suit  of  tartan  conformed  to  the  general  hue 
of  the  heather,  was  invisible  at  a  little  distance,  when  travers- 
ing a  moor,  but  came  full  into  view  in  crossing  a  green  field  or 
meadow  ;  the  suit  given  by  nature  to  the  flounder,  tinted  ap- 
parently on  the  same  principle  of  concealment,  exhibits  a  de 
gree  of  adaptation  to  its  varying  circumstances,  which  the 
tartan  wanted.  And  it  is  certainly  curious  enough  to  find,  in 
one  of  our  commonest  fishes,  a  property  which  used  to  be  re* 
garded  as  one  of  the  standing  marvels  of  the  zoology  of  those 
remote  countries  of  which  the  chameleon  is  a  native. 

The  pond  in  the  piece  of  planting,  though  as  unsightly  a 
little  patch  of  water  as  might  be,  was,  I  found,  a  greatly  richer 
study  than  the  dark  rivulet.  Mean  and  small  as  it  was, — not 
larger  in  area  inside  its  fringe  of  rushes  than  a  fashionable 
drawing-room, — its  natural  history  would  have  formed  an  in- 
teresting volume  ;  and  many  a  half  hour  have  I  spent  beside 
it  in  the  heat  of  the  day,  watching  its  numerous  inhabitants, — 
insect,  reptilian,  and  vermiferous.  There  were  two — apparent- 
ly three — different  species  of  libellula  that  used  to  come  and 
deposit  their  eggs  in  it, — one  of  the  two,  that  large  kind  of 
dragon-fly  (JSshna  grandis),  scarce  smaller  than  one's  middle- 
finger, — which  is  so  beautifully  colored  black  and  yellow,  as 
if  adorned  by  the  same  taste  one  sees  displayed  in  the  chariots 
and  liveries  of  the  fashionable  world.  The  other  fly  was  a 
greatly  more  slender  and  smaller  species  or  genus,  rather 
Agrion  ;  and  it  seemed  two,  not  one,  from  the  circumstance, 
that  about  one-half  the  individuals  were  beautifully  varie- 
gated black  and  sky-blue,  the  other  half  black  and  bright 
crimson.  But  the  peculiarity  was  merely  a  sexual  one  ;  as  if 
in  illustration  of  those  fine  analogies  with  which  all  nature 
is  charged,  the  sexes  put  on  the  complimentary  colors,  and 
are  mutually  fascinating,  not  by  resembling,  but  by  corre- 
sponding to,  each  other.  I  learned  in  time  to  distinguish  the 
disagreeal  le  looking  larvre  of  these  flies,  both  larger  and  smaller, 


198 

with  their  six  hairy  legs,  and  their  grotesque  formidable  vizors, 
and  found  that  they  were  the  very  pirates  of  the  water,  as  the 
splendid  inserts  into  which  they  were  ultimately  developed 
were  the  very  tyrants  of  the  lower  air.  It  was  strange  to  see 
the  beautiful  winged  creature  that  sprang  out  of  the  pupae 
into  which  the  repulsive  looking  pirate  had  been  transformed, 
launch  forth  into  its  new  element,  changed  in  everything  save 
its  nature,  but  still  unchanged  in  that,  and  rendering  itself  as 
formidable  to  the  moth  and  the  butterfly  as  it  had  been  before 
to  the  newt  and  the  tadpole.  There  is,  I  dare  say,  an  analogy 
here  also.  It  is  in  the  first  stages  of  our  own  species,  as  certain- 
ly as  in  that  of  the  dragon-fly,  that  the  character  is  fixed. 
Further,  I  used  to  experience  much  interest  in  watching  the 
progress  of  the  frog,  in  its  earlier  stages  from  the  egg  to  the 
fish  ;  then  from  the  fish  to  the  reptile-fish,  with  its  fringed 
tail,  and  ventral  and  pectoral  limbs  ;  and,  last  of  all,  from  the 
reptile-fish  to  the  complete  reptile.  I  had  not  yet  learned — 
nor  was  it  anywhere  known  at  the  time — that  the  history  of 
the  individual  frog,  through  these  successive  transformations,  is 
a  history  in  small  of  the  animal  creation  itself  in  its  earlier 
stages, — that  in  order  of  time  the  egg-like  mollusc  had  taken 
precedence  of  the  fish,  and  the  fish  of  the  reptile  ;  and  that  an 
intermediate  order  of  creatures  had  once  abounded,  in  which, 
as  in  the  half-developed  frog,  the  natures  of  both  fish  and  rep- 
tile were  united.  But,  though  unacquainted  with  this  strange 
analogy,  the  transformations  were  of  themselves  wonderful 
enough  to  fiL  for  a  time  my  whole  mind.  I  remember  being 
struck  one  afternoon,  after  spending  my  customary  spare  half 
hour  beside  the  pond,  and  marking  the  peculiar  style  of  color- 
ing in  the  yellow  and  black  libellulidae  in  the  common  wasp, 
and  in  a  yellow  and  black  species  of  ichneumon  fly,  to  detect 
in  some  half-dozen  gentlemen's  carriages  that  were  standing 
opposite  our  work-shed, — for  the  good  old  knight  of  Conon 
House  had  a  dinner  party  that  evening, — exactly  the  same 
style  of  ornamental  coloring.  The  greater  number  of  the 
vehicles  were  yellow  and  black, — -just  as  these  were  the  pre- 
vailing colors  among  the  wasps  and  libellulidae  ;  but  there 


OR,   THE  SrORY  OF  MY  EDUCATION.  199 

was  a  slight  admixture  of  other  colors  among  them  too : 
there  was  at  least  one  that  was  black  and  green,  or  black  and 
blue,  I  forget  which ;  and  another  black  and  brown.  And  so 
it  was  among  the  insects  also :  the  same  sort  of  taste,  both  in 
color  and  the  arrangements  of  color,  and  even  in  the  propor- 
tions of  the  various  colors,  seemed  to  have  regulated  the 
style  of  ornament  manifested  in  the  carriages  of  the  dinner 
party,  and  of  the  insect  visitors  of  the  pond.  Further,  I 
thought  I  could  detect  a  considerable  degree  of  resemblance 
in  form  between  a  chariot  and  an  insect.  There  was  a  great 
abdominal  body,  separated  by  a  narrow  isthmus  from  a  thoracic 
coach-box,  where  the  directing  power  was  stationed  ;  while 
the  wheels,  poles,  springs,  and  general  framework  on  which 
the  vehicle  rested,  corresponded  to  the  wings,  limbs,  and 
antennae  of  the  insect.  There  was  at  least  sufficient  resem- 
blance of  form  to  justify  resemblance  of  color  ;  and  here  was 
the  actual  resemblance  of  color  which  the  resemblance  of 
form  justified.  I  remember  that,  in  musing  over  the  coinci- 
dence, I  learned  to  suspect,  for  the  first  time,  that  it  might  be 
no  mere  coincidence  after  all ;  and  that  the  fact  embodied  in 
the  remarkable  text  which  informs  us  that  the  Creator  made 
man  in  his  own  image,  might  in  reality  lie  at  its  foundation 
as  the  proper  solution.  Man,  spurred  by  his  necessities,  has 
discovered  for  himself  mechanical  contrivances,  which  he  has 
afterwards  found  anticipated  as  contrivances  of  the  Divine 
Mind,  in  some  organism,  animal  or  vegetable.  In  the  same 
way,  his  sense  of  beauty  in  form  of  color  originates  some  pleas- 
ing combination  of  lines  or  tints ;  and  he  then  discovers  that 
it  also  has  been  anticipated.  He  gets  his  chariot  tastefully 
painted  black  and  yellow,  and  lo !  the  wasp  that  settles  on  its 
wheel,  or  the  dragon-fly  that  darts  over  it,  he  finds  painted  in 
exactly  the  same  style.  His  neighbor,  indulging  in  a  differ- 
ent taste,  gets  his  vehicle  painted  black  and  blue,  and  lo! 
some  lesser  libellula  or  ichneumon  fly  comes  whizzing  past, 
to  justify  his  style  of  ornament  also,  but  at  the  same  time  to 
show  that  it,  too,  had  existed  ages  before. 

The  evenings  gradually  closed  in  as  the  season  waned, — at 


200  MY  SCHOOLS  AND    SCHOOLMASTERS; 

first  abridging,  and  at  length  wholly  interdicting,  my  evening 
walks ;  and  having  no  other  place  to  which  to  retire,  save  the 
dark,  gousty  hay -loft,  into  which  a  light  was  never  admitted, 
I  had  to  seek  the  shelter  of  the  barrack,  and  succeeded  usually 
in  finding  a  seat  within  at  least  sight  of  the  fire.  The  place 
was  greatly  over-crowded ;  and,  as  in  all  over-large  companies, 
it  had  commonly  its  four  or  five  groupes  of  talkers,  each  group 
furnished  with  a  topic  of  its  own.  The  elderly  men  spoke 
about  the  state  of  the  markets,  and  speculated,  in  especial,  on 
the  price  of  oatmeal ;  the  apprentices  talked  about  lasses ; 
while  knots  of  intermediate  age  discussed  occasionally  both 
markets  and  lasses  too,  or  spoke  of  old  companions,  their  pe- 
culiarities and  history,  or  expatiated  on  the  adventures  of 
former  work  seasons,  and  the  character  of  the  neighboring 
lairds.  Politics  proper  I  never  heard.  During  the  whole 
season  a  newspaper  never  once  entered  the  barrack  door.  At 
times  a  song  or  a  story  secured  the  attention  of  the  whole  bar- 
rack ;  and  there  was  in  especial  one  story-teller  whose  powers 
of  commanding  attention  were  very  great.  He  was  a  middle- 
aged  Highlander,  not  very  skilful  as  a  workman,  and  but  in- 
differently provided  with  English  ;  and  as  there  usually  at- 
taches a  nickname  to  persons  in  the  humbler  walks  that  are 
marked  by  any  eccentricity  of  character,  he  was  better  known 
among  his  brother  workmen  as  Jock  Mo-ghoal,  i.  e.  John  my 
Darling,  than  by  his  proper  name.  Of  all  Jock  Mo-ghoal's 
stories  Jock  Mo-ghoal  was  himself  the  hero ;  and  certainly 
most  wonderful  w^as  the  invention  of  the  man.  As  recorded 
in  his.  narratives,  his  life  was  one  long  epic  poem,  filled  with 
strange  and  startling  adventure,  and  furnished  with  an  extra- 
ordinary machinery  of  the  wild  and  supernatural ;  and  though 
ill  knew  that  Jock  made  imagination  supply,  in  his  histories, 
he  place  of  memory,  not  even  Ulysses  or  jEneas, — men  who, 
unless  very  much  indebted  to  their  poets,  must  have  been  of  a 
similar  turn, — could  have  attracted  more  notice  at  the  courts 
of  Alcinous  or  Dido,  than  Jock  in  the  barrack.  The  work- 
men used,  on  the  mornings  after  his  greater  narratives,  to  look 
one  another  full  in  the  face,  and  ask,  with  a  smile  rather  in- 


201 

cipient  than  fully  manifest,  whether  "  J  }ck  was  na  perfectly 
wonderful'  last  nicht  ?" 

He  had  several  times  visited  the  south  of  Scotland,  as  one 
of  a  band  of  Highland  reapers,  for  employment  in  his  proper 
profession  very  often  failed  poor  Jock ;  and  these  journeys 
formed  the  grand  occasions  of  his  adventures.  One  of  his  nar- 
ratives commenced,  I  remember,  with  a  frightful  midnight 
scene  in  a  solitary  churchyard.  Jock  had  lost  his  way  in  the 
darkness ;  and,  after  stumbling  among  burial-mounds,  and 
tombstones,  he  had  toppled  into  an  open  grave,  which  was  of 
a  depth  so  profound,  that  for  some  time  he  failed  to  escape 
from  it,  and  merely  pulled  down  upon  himself,  in  his  attempts 
to  climb  its  loose  sides,  musty  skulls  and  great  thigh-bones, 
and  pieces  of  decayed  coffins.  At  length,  however,  he  did 
succeed  in  getting  out,  just  as  a  party  of  unscrupulous  resur- 
rectionists were  in  the  act  of  entering  the  burying-ground ;  and 
they,  naturally  enough  preferring  an  undecayed  subject  that 
had  the  life  in  it  to  preserve  it  fresh,  to  dead  corpses  the  worse 
for  the  keeping,  gave  him  chase ;  and  it  was  with  the  extrem- 
est  difficulty  that,  after  scudding  over  wild  moors  and  through 
dark  woods,  he  at  length  escaped  them  by  derning  himself  in 
a  fox-earth.  The  season  of  autumnal  labor  over,  he  visited 
Edinburgh  on  his  way  north ;  and  was  passing  along  the  High 
Street,  when,  seeing  a  Highland  girl  on  the  opposite  side  with 
whom  he  was  intimate,  and  whom  he  afterwards  married, 
he  strode  across  to  address  her,  and  a  chariot  coming  whirling 
along  the  street  at  the  time  at  full  speed,  he  was  struck  by 
the  pole  and  knocked  down.  The  blow  had  taken  him  full 
on  the  chest ;  but  though  the  bone  seemed  injured,  and  the 
integuments  became  frightfully  swollen  and  livid,  he  was  able 
to  get  up ;  and,  on  asking  to  be  shown  the  way  to  a  surgeon's 
fchop,  his  acquaintance  the  girl  brought  him  to  an  under- 
-  ground  room  in  one  of  the  narrow  lanes  off  the  street,  which, 
^ave  for  the  light  of  a  great  fire,  would  have  been  pitch-dark 
at  mid-day,  and  in  which  he  found  a  little  wrinkled  old 
woman,  as  yellow  as  the  smoke  that  filled  the  apartment. 
"  Choose,"  said  the  hag,  as  she  looked  at  the  injured  part, 


202 

"  one  of  two  things, — a  cure  slow  but  sure,  or  sudden  but  im- 
perfect. Or  shall  I  put  back  the  hurt  altogether  till  you  get 
home  ?"  "  That,  that,"  said  Jock  ;  "  if  I  were  ance  home  I 
could  bear  it  well  enouch."  The  hag  began  to  pass  her  hand 
over  the  injured  part,  and  to  mutter  under  her  breath  some 
potent  charm ;  and  as  she  muttered  and  manipulated,  the 
swelling  gradually  subsided,  and  the  livid  tints  blanched,  till 
at  length  nought  remained  to  tell  of  the  recent  accident  save 
a  pale  spot  in  the  middle  of  the  breast,  surrounded  by  a  thread- 
like circle  of  blue.  And  now,  she  said,  you  are  well  for  three 
weeks ;  but  be  prepared  for  the  fourth.  Jock  prosecuted  his 
northward  journey,  and  encountered  the  usual  amount  of  ad- 
venture by  the  way.  He  was  attacked  by  robbers,  but,  as- 
sistance coming  up,  he  succeeded  in  beating  them  off.  He  lost 
his  way  in  a  thick  mist,  but  found  shelter,  after  many  hours' 
wandering  far  among  the  hills,  in  a  deserted  shepherd's  shielin'. 
He  was  nearly  buried  in  a  sudden  snow-storm  that  broke  out 
by  night,  but,  getting  into  the  middle  of  a  cooped-up  flock  of 
sheep,  they  kept  him  warm  and  comfortable  amid  the  vast 
drift-wreaths,  till  the  light  of  morning  enabled  him  to  prose- 
cute his  journey.  At  length  he  reached  home,  and  was  prose- 
cuting his  ordinary  avocations,  when  the  third  week  came  to 
a  close ;  and  he  was  on  a  lonely  moor  at  the  very  hour  he  had 
meet  with  the  accident  on  the  High  Street,  when  he  suddenly 
heard  the  distant  rattle  of  a  chariot,  though  not  a  shadow  of 
the  vehicle  was  to  be  seen ;  the  sounds  came  bearing  down 
upon  him,  heightening  as  they  approached,  and,  when  at  the 
loudest,  a  violent  blow  on  the  breast  prostrated  him  on  the 
moor.  The  stroke  of  the  High  Street  "  had  come  back,"  just 
as  the  wise  woman  had  said  it  would,  though  with  accom- 
paniments that  Jock  had  not  anticipated.  It  was  with  dim 
culty  he  reached  his  cottage  that  evening  ;  and  there  elapsei 
fully  six  weeks  ere  he  was  able  to  quit  it  again.  Such,  in  its 
outlines,  was  one  of  the  marvellous  narratives  of  Jock  Mo- 
ghoal.  He  belonged  to  a  curious  class,  known  by  specimen, 
in,  I  suppose,  almost  every  locality,  especially  in  the  more  prim- 
itive ones, — for  the  smart  ridicule  common  in  the  artificial 


203 

states  of  society  greatly  stunt  their  growth  ;  and  in  our  litera- 
ture,— as  represented  by  the  Bobadils,  Young  Wildings, 
Caleb  Balderstons,  and  Baron  Munchausens, — they  hold  a 
prominent  place.  The  class  is  to  be  found  of  very  general 
development  among  the  vagabond  tribes.  I  have  listened  to 
wonderful  personal  narratives  that  had  not  a  word  of  truth  in 
them  "  from  gipsies  brown  in  summer  glades  that  bask,"  as  I 
took  my  seat  beside  their  fire,  in  a  wild  rock-cave  in  the  neigh- 
norhood  of  Rosemarkie,  or  at  a  later  period  in  the  cave  of 
Marcus  ;  and  in  getting  into  conversation  with  individuals  of 
the  more  thoroughly  lapsed  classes  of  our  large  towns,  I  have 
found  that  a  faculty  of  extemporary  fabrication  was  almost 
the  only  one  which  I  could  calculate  on  finding  among  them  in 
a  state  of  vigorous  activity.  That  in  some  cases  the  propen- 
sity should  be  found  co-existing  with  superior  calibre  and  ac- 
quirement, and  with  even  a  sense  of  honor  by  no  means  very 
obtuse,  must  be  regarded  as  one  of  the  strange  anomalies 
which  so  often  surprise  and  perplex  the  student  of  human 
character.  As  a  misdirected  toe-nail,  injured  by  pressure, 
sometimes  turns  round,  and,  re-entering  the  flesh,  vexes  it 
into  a  sore,  it  would  seem  as  if  that  noble  inventive  faculty 
to  which  we  owe  the  parable  and  the  epic  poem,  was  liable, 
when  constrained  by  self-love,  to  similar  misdirections ;  and 
certainly,  when  turned  inwards  upon  its  possessor,  the  moral 
character  festers  or  grows  callous  around  it. 

There  was  no  one  in  the  barrack  with  whom  I  cared  much 
to  converse,  or  who,  in  turn,  cared  much  to  converse  with  me ; 
and  so  I  learned,  on  the  occasion  when  the  company  got  dull 
and  broke  up  into  groupes,  to  retire  to  the  hay-loft  where  I 
slept,  and  pass  there  whole  hours  seated  on  my  chest.  The 
loft  was  a  vast  apartment,  some  fifty  or  sixty  feet  in  length, 
with  its  naked  rafters  raised  little  more  than  a  man's  height 
over  the  floor ;  but  in  the  starlit  nights,  when  the  openings  in 
the  wall  assumed  the  character  of  square  patches  of  darkness- 
visible  stamped  upon  utter  darkness,  it  looked  quite  as  well 
as  any  other  unlighted  place  that  could  not  be  seen  ;  and  in 
nights  brightened  by  the  moon,  the  pale  oeams,  which  found 
10 


204  MY  SCHOOLS  AND  SCHOOLMASTERS; 

access  at  openings  and  crevices,  rendered  its  wide  ai  ea  quite 
picturesque  enough  for  ghosts  to  walk  in.  But  I  never  saw 
any ;  and  the  only  sounds  I  heard  were  those  made  by  the 
horses  in  the  stable  below,  champing  and  snorting  c .  er  their 
food.  They  were,  I  doubt  not,  happy  enough  in  their  dark 
stalls,  because  they  were  horses,  and  had  plenty  to  eat ;  and 
I  was  at  times  quite  happy  enough  in  the  dark  loft  above,  be 
cause  I  was  a  man,  and  could  think  and  imagine.  It  is,  I  be- 
lieve, Addison  who  remarks,  that  if  all  the  thoughts  which 
pass  through  n  an's  minds  were  to  be  made  public,  the  great 
difference  which  seems  to  exist  between  the  thinking  of  the 
wise  and  of  the  unwise  would  be  a  good  deal  reduced  ;  seeing 
that  it  is  a  difference  which  does  not  consist  in  their  not  hav- 
ing the  same  weak  thoughts  in  common,  but  merely  in  the 
prudence  through  which  the  wise  suppress  their  foolish  ones. 
I  still  possess  notes  of  the  cogitations  of  these  solitary  even- 
nings,  ample  enough  to  show  that  they  were  extraordinary 
combinations  of  the  false  and  the  true ;  but  I  at  the  same  time 
hold  them  sufficiently  in  memory  to  remember,  that  I  scarce, 
if  at  all,  distinguished  between  what  was  false  and  true  in 
them  at  the  time.  The  literature  of  almost  every  people  has 
a  corresponding  early  stage,  in  which  fresh  thinking  is  mingled 
with  little  conceits,  and  in  which  the  taste  is  usually  false,  but 
the  feeling  true. 

Let  me  present  my  younger  readers,  from  my  notes,  with 
the  variously  compounded  cogitations  of  one  of  these  quiet 
evenings.  What  formed  so  long  ago  one  of  my  exercises  may 
now  form  one  of  theirs,  if  they  but  set  themselves  to  separate 
the  solid  from  the  unsolid  thinking  contained  in  my  abstract. 

MUSINGS. 

«*  I  stood  last  summer  on  the  summit  of  Tor-Achilfy  [a  pyramidal  hill  about  six 
miles  from  Conon  side],  and  occupied,  when  there,  the  centre  cf  a  wide  circle,  about 
fifty  miles  in  diameter.  I  can  still  call  up  its  rough-edged  sea  of  hills,  with  the  clear 
bine  firmament  arching  over,  and  the  slant  rays  of  the  setting  sun  gleaming  athwart. 
Yes,  over  that  circular  field  fifty  miles  across,  the  firmament  closed  all  around  at  the 
horizon,  as  a  watch  glass  closes  round  the  dial-plate  of  the  watch.     Sky  and  earth 


OK,    THE   STORY   OF   MY   EDUCATION.  205 

eecmed  co -extensive  ;  and  yet  how  incalculably  vast  their  difference  of  area! 
Thousands  of  systems  seemed  but  commensurate  to  the  eye  with  a  small  dis- 
trict of  earth  fifty  miles  each  way.  But  capacious  as  the  human  imagination 
has  been  deemed,  can  it  conceive  of  an  area  of  wlier  field  ?  Mine  tan- 
not.  My  mind  cannot  take  in  more  at  a  glance,  if  I  may  so  speak,  than  is 
taken  in  by  the  eye.  I  cannot  conceive  of  a  wider  area  than  that  which 
the  sight  commands  from  the  summit  ot  a  lofty  eminence.  I  can  pass  in  im- 
agination through  many  such  areas.  I  can  add  field  to  field  ad  infinitum  ; 
and  thus  conceive  of  infinite  space,  by  conceiving  of  a  space  which  can  bo 
Infinitely  added  to  ;  but  all  of  space  that  I  can  lake  in  at  one  process  is  an 
area  commensurate  with  that  embraced  at  a  glance  by  the  eye.  How,  then, 
have  I  my  conception  of  the  earth  as  a  whole,— of  the  solar  system  as  a  whole, 
— nay,  of  many  systems  as  a  whole?  Just  as  1  have  my  conceptions  of  a  school- 
globe  or  of  an  Orrery, — by  diminution.  It  is  through  the  diminution  induced  by 
distance  that  the  sidereal  heavens  only  co-extend,  as  seen  from  the  top  of  Tor- 
Achilty,  with  a  portion  of  the  counties  of  Ross  and  Inverness.  The  apparent  area 
is  the  same,  but  the  coloring  is  different.  Our  ideas  of  greatness,  then,  are  much 
less  dependent  on  actual  area  than  on  what  painters  term  aerial  perspective. 
The  dimness  of  distance  and  the  diminution  of  parts  are  essential  to  right  con- 
ceptions of  great  magnitude. 

"  Of  the  various  figures  presented  to  me  here,  I  seize  strong  hold  of  but 
one.  I  brood  over  the  picture  of  the  solar  system  conjured  up.  I  conceive 
of  the  satellites  as  light  shallops  that  continually  sail  round  heavier  vessels, 
and  consider  how  much  more  of  space  they  must  traverse  than  the  orbs  to 
which  they  are  attached.  The  entire  system  is  presented  to  me  as  an  Orrery 
of  the  apparent  size  of  the  area  of  landscape  seen  from  the  hill-top  ;  but 
dimness  and  darkness  prevent  the  diminution  from  communicating  that  ap- 
pearance of  littleness  to  the  whole  which  would  attach  to  it  were  it,  like 
an  actual  Orrery,  sharply  defined  and  clear.  As  the  picture  rises  before  me, 
the  entire  system  seems  to  possess,  what  I  suspect  it  wants,  its  atmosphere 
like  that  of  the  earth,  which  reflects  the  light  of  the  sun  in  the  different 
degrees  of  excessive  brightness, — noon-tide  splendor,  the  fainter  shades  of  even- 
ing and  gray  twilight  obscurity.  This  veil  of  light  is  thickest  towards  the 
centie  of  the  system  ;  for  when  the  glance  rests  on  its  edges,  the  suns  of 
other  systems  may  be  seen  peeping  through.  I  see  Mercury  sparkling  to  the 
Bun,  with  its  oceans  of  molten  glass  and  its  fountains  of  liquid  gold.  I  see 
the  ice  mountains  of  Saturn,  hoar  through  the  twilight.  I  behold  the  earth 
rolling  upon  itself,  from  darkness  to  light,  and  from  light  to  darkness.  I 
see  the  clouds  of  winter  i-eitling  over  one  part  of  it,  with  the  nether  mantle 
of  snow  shining  through  them  ;  I  see  in  another  a  brown,  dusky  waste  of 
Band  lighted  up  by  the  glow  of  summer.  One  ocean  appears  smooth  as  a  mir- 
ror,— another  is  black  with  tempest.  I  see  the  pyramid  of  shade  which  each 
of  the  planets  casts  from  its  darkened  side  into  the  space  behind  ;  and  I  per- 
ceive the  stars  twinkling  through  each  opening,  as  through  the  angular  doors  of 
a  pavilion. 

44  Such  is  the  scene  seen  at  right  angles  with  the  plane  in  which  the  planet* 


206 

more;  but  what  would  be  its  aspect  if  I  saw  it  in  the  iine  of  the  plane  1 
What  would  be  its  appearance  if  I  saw  it  edgewise?  There  arises  in  my  mind 
one  of  those  uncertainties  which  so  frequenlly  convince  me  that  1  am  igno- 
rant. I  cannot  complete  my  picture,  for  I  do  not  know  whether  all  the  plan- 
ets move  in  one  plane.  How  determine  the  point  ?  A  ray  of  light  breaks 
in.  Huzza !  I  have  found  it.  If  the  courses  of  the  planets  as  seen  in  the 
heavens  form  parallel  lines,  then  must  they  all  move  in  one  plane  ;  and  vice 
versd.  But  hold!  That  would  be  as  seen  from  the  sun,— if  the  planets  could 
be  seen  from  the  sun.  The  earth  is  but  one  of  their  own  number,  and  from 
it  the  point  of  view  must  be  disadvantageous.  The  diurnal  motion  must  per- 
plex. But  no.  The  apparent  motion  of  the  heavens  need  not  disturb  the  ob- 
servation. Let  the  course  of  the  planets  through  the  fixed  stars  be  marked, 
and  though,  from  the  peculiarity  of  the  point  of  observation,  their  motion  may 
at  one  time  seem  more  rapid,  and  at  another  more  slow,  yet  if  their  plane  be, 
as  a  workman  would  say,  out  of  twist,  their  lines  will  seem  parallel.  Still  in 
some  doubt,  however:  I  long  for  a  glance  at  an  Orrery,  to  determine  the  point; 
and  then  I  remember  that  Ferguson,  an  untaught  man  like  myself,  had  made 
more  Orreries  than  any  one  else,  and  that  mechanical  contrivances  of  the  kind 
were  the  natural  recourse  of  a  man  unskilled  in  the  higher  geometry.  But  it 
would  be  better  to  be  a  mathematician  than  skilful  in  contriving  Orreries.  A 
man  of  the  Newtonian  cast  of  mind,  and  accomplished  in  the  Newtonian  learning, 
could  solve  the  problem  where  I  sat,  without  an  Orrery. 

44  From  the  thing  contemplated,  I  pass  to  the  consideration  of  the  mind 
that  contemplates.  O  !  that  wonderful  Newton,  respecting  whom  the  French- 
man inquired  whether  he  ate  and  slept  like  other  men.  I  consider  how 
one  mind  excels  another  ;  nay,  how  one  man  excels  a  thousand  ;  and,  by 
way  of  illustration,  I  bethink  me  of  the  mode  of  valuing  diamonds.  A  single 
diamond  that  weighs  fifty  carats  is  deemed  more  valuable  than  two  thousand 
diamonds  each  of  which  only  weighs  one.  My  illustration  refers  exclusively 
to  the  native  powers  ;  but  may  it  not,  I  ask,  bear  also  on  the  acquisition 
of  knowledge  ?  Every  new  idea  added  to  the  stock  already  collected  is  a 
carat  added  to  the  diamond  ;  for  it  is  not  only  valuable  to  itself,  but  it  also 
increases  the  value  of  all  the  others,  by  giving  to  each  of  them  a  new  link 
of  association. 

44  The  thought  links  itself  on  to  another,  mayhap  less  sound  :  —  Do  not  the 
minds  of  men  of  exalted  genius,  such  as  Homer,  Milton,  Shakspeare,  seem  to 
partake  of  some  of  the  qualities  of  infinitude  ?  Add  a  great  many  bricks 
together,  and  they  form  a  pyramid  as  huge  as  the  peak  of  Teneriffe.  Add 
all  the  common  minds  together  that  the  world  ever  produced,  and  the  mind 
of  a  Shakspeare  towers  over  the  whole,  in  all  the  grandeur  of  unapproach- 
able infinity.  That  which  is  infinite  admits  of  neither  increase  nor  diminu- 
tion. Is  it  not  so  with  genius  of  a  certain  altitude  ?  Homer,  Milton,  Shaks- 
peare, were  perhaps  men  of  equal  powers.  Homer  was,  it  is  said,  a  beg- 
gar ;  Shakspeare  an  illiterate  wool-comber ;  Milton  skilled  in  all  human  learn- 
ing. But  they  have  all  risen  to  an  equal  height.  Learning  has  added  no- 
thiug   to  the   illimitable  genius   of   the  one  ;    nor  has   the   want  of  it  detracted 


OR,    THE   STORY  OF   MY  EDUCATION.  207 


from   th«    infinite  powers  of  the  others.    Bin   it  is  time  that  I  go   and  prepare 
supper." 

I  visited  the  policies  of  Conon  House  a  full  quarter  of  a  cen- 
tury after  this  time, — walked  round  the  kiln,  once  our  barrack, 
— scaled  the  outside  stone-stair  of  the  hay-loft,  to  stand  for 
half  a  minute  on  the  spot  where  I  used  to  spend  whole  hours 
seated  on  my  chest,  so  long  before ;  and  then  enjoyed  a  quiet 
stroll  among  the  woods  of  the  Conon.  The  river  was  big  in 
flood :  it  was  exactly  such  a  river  Conon  as  I  had  lost  sight  of 
in  the  winter  of  1821,  and  eddied  past  dark  and  heavy,  sweep- 
ing over  bulwark  and  bank.  The  low-stemmed  alders  that 
rose  on  islet  and  mound  seemed  shorn  of  half  their  trunks  in 
the  tide ;  here  and  there  an  elastic  branch  bent  to  the  current, 
and  rose  and  bent  again ;  and  now  a  tuft  of  withered  heath 
came  floating  down,  and  now  a  soiled  wreath  of  foam.  How 
vividly  the  past  rose  up  before  me ! — boyish  day-dreams,  for- 
gotten for  twenty  years, — the  fossils  of  an  early  formation 
of  mind,  produced  at  a  period  when  the  atmosphere  of  feeling 
was  warmer  than  now,  and  the  immaturities  of  the  mental 
kingdom  grew  rank  and  large,  like  the  ancient  cryptogamia, 
and  bore  no  specific  resemblance  to  the  productions  of  a  riper 
time.  The  season  1  had  passed  in  the  neighborhood  so  long 
before, — the  first  I  had  anywhere  spent  among  strangers, — be- 
longed to  an  age  when  home  is  not  a  country,  nor  a  province 
even,  but  simply  a  little  spot  of  earth,  inhabited  by  friends  and 
relatives ;  and  the  verses,  long  forgotten,  in  which  my  joy  had 
found  vent  when  on  the  eve  of  returning  to  that  home,  came 
chiming  as  freshly  into  my  memory  as  if  scarce  a  month  had 
passed  since  I  had  composed  them  beside  the  Conon.  Here 
they  are,  with  all  the  green  juvenility  of  the  home-sickness 
still  about  them, — a  true  petrifaction  of  an  extinct  feeling  : 

TO    THE    CONON. 

Conon,  fair  flowed  thy  mountain  stream, 
Through  blossomed  heath  and  ripening  flold, 

When,  shrunk  by  summer's  fervid  beam, 
Thy  peaceful  waves  I  first  beheld. 


208  MY  SCHOOLS  AND  SCHOOLMASTERS; 

Calmly  they  swept  thy  winding  shore, 

When  harvest's  mirthful  feast  was  nigh, — 
When,  breeze-borne,  with  thy  hoarser  roar 
Came  mingling  sweet  the  reapers'  cry. 

But  now  I  mark  thy  angry  wave 

Rush  headlong  to  the  stormy  sea ; 
Wildly  the  blasts  of  winter  rave, 

Sad  rustling  through  the  leafless  tree. 
Loose  on  its  spray  the  alder  leaf 

Hangs  wavering,  trembling,  sear  and  browa; 
And  dark  thy  eddies  whirl  beneath, 

And  white  thy  foam  comes  floating  down. 

Thy  banks  with  withered  shrubs  are  spread  ; 

Thy  fields  confess  stern  winter's  reign  ; 
And  gleams  yon  thorn  with  berries  red, 

Like  banner  on  a  ravaged  plain. 
Hark  !  ceaseless  groans  the  leafless  wood  ; 

Hark  !  ceaseless  roars  thy  stream  below ; 
Ben-Vaichard's  peaks  are  dark  with  cloud; 

Ben-Weavis'  crest  is  white  with  snow. 

And  yet,  though  red  thy  stream  comes  down,— 

Though  bleak  th'  encircling  hills  appear, — 
Though  field  be  bare,  and  forest  brown, 

And  winter  rule  the  waning  year,— 
Unmov'd  I  see  each  charm  decay, 

Uumourn'd  the  sweets  of  autumn  die ; 
And  fading  flower  and  leafless  spray 

Court  all  in  vain  the  thoughtful  sigh. 

Not  that  dull  grief  delights  to  see 

Vex'd  Nature  wear  a  kindred  gloom  ; 
Not  that  she  smiled  in  vain  to  me, 

When  gaily  prank'd  in  summer's  bloom. 
Nay,  much  I  lov'd,  at  even  tide, 

Through  Brahan's  lonely  woods  to  stray 
To  mark  thy  peaceful  billows  glide, 

And  watch  the  sun's  declining  ray. 

But  yet,  though  roll'd  thy  billows  fair 

As  ere  roll'd  those  of  classic  stream, — 
Though  green  thy  woods,  now  dark  and  bare, 

Bask'd  beauteous  in  the  western  beam  ; 
To  mark  a  scene  that  childhood  loved, 

The  anxious  eye  was  turn'd  in  vain  ; 
Nor  could  1  find  the  friend  approv'd, 

That  shar'd  my  joy  or  sooth'd  my  pain. 


t,   THE  STORY  OF  MY  EDUCATION.  209 

Now  winter  reigns  :  these  hills  no  more 

Shall  sternly  bound  my  anxious  view ; 
Soon,  bent  my  course  to  Croma's  shore, 

Shall  I  yon  winding  path  pursue. 
Fairer  than  here  gay  summer's  glow 

To  me  there  wintry  storms  shall  seem  : 
Then  blow,  ye  bitter  breezes,  blow, 

And  lash  the  Conon's  mountain  stream  \ 


210  MY  SCHOOLS  AND  SCHOOLMASTERS; 


CHAPTER    XI. 


MTh,i  bounding  pulse,  the  languid  limb, 
The  changing  spirit's  rise  and  fall, — 
We  know  that  these  were  felt  by  him, 
For  these  are  felt  by  all." 

MONTGOMERV. 

The  apprenticeship  of  my  friend  William  Ross  had  expired 
during  the  working  season  of  this  year,  when  I  was  engaged 
at  Conon-side ;  and  he  was  now  living  in  his  mother's  cottage 
in  the  parish  of  Nigg,  on  the  Ross-shire  side  of  the  Cromarty 
Frith.  And  so,  with  the  sea  between  us,  we  could  no  longer 
meet  every  evening  as  before,  or  take  long  night-walks  among 
the  woods.  I  crossed  the  Frith,  however,  and  spent  one  happy 
day  in  his  society,  in  a  little,  low-roofed  domicile,  with  a  furze- 
roughened  ravine  on  the  one  side,  and  a  dark  fir-wood  on  the 
other;  and  which,  though  picturesque  and  interesting  as  a 
cottage,  must,  I  fear,  have  been  a  very  uncomfortable  home. 
His  father,  whom  I  had  not  before  seen,  was  sitting  beside  the 
fire  as  I  entered.  In  all  except  expression  he  was  wonderfully 
like  my  friend ;  and  yet  he  was  one  of  the  most  vapid  men  I 
ever  knew, — a  man  literally  without  an  idea,  and  almost  with- 
out a  recollection  or  a  fact.  And  my  friend's  mother,  though 
she  showed  a  certain  kindliness  of  disposition  which  her  hus- 
band wanted,  was  loquacious  and  weak.  Had  my  quondam 
acquaintance,  the  vigorous-minded  maniac  of  Ord,  seen  Wil- 
liam and  his  parents,  she  would  have  triumphantly  referred  to 


MY  EDUCATION.  211 

them  in  evidence  that  Flavel  and  the  Schoolmen  were  wholly 
in  the  right  in  holding  that  souls  are  not  "  derived  through 
parental  traduction." 

My  friend  had  much  to  show  me  :  he  had  made  an  inter- 
esting series  of  water-color  sketches  of  the  old  castles  of  the 
neighborhood,  and  a  very  elaborate  set  of  drawings  of  what 
are  known  as  the  Runic  obelisks  of  Ross  :  he  had  made  some 
first  attempts,  too,  in  oil-painting ;  but  though  his  drawing 
was,  as  usual,  correct,  there  was  a  deadness  and  want  of 
transparency  about  his  coloring,  which  characterized  all  his 
after  attempts  in  the  same  department,  and  which  was,  I  sus- 
pect, the  result  of  some  such  deficiency  in  his  perceptions  of 
the  harmonies  of  color  as  that  which,  in  another  department 
of  sense,  made  me  so  insensible  to  the  harmonies  of  sound. 
His  drawings  of  the  obelisks  were  of  singular  interest.  Not 
only  have  the  thirty  years  which  have  since  elapsed  exerted 
their  dilapidating  effect  on  all  the  originals  from  which  he  drew, 
but  one  of  the  number — the  most  entire  of  the  group  at  that 
time — has  been  since  almost  wholly  destroyed ;  and  so,  what  he 
was  then  able  to  do  there  can  be  no  such  opportunity  of  doing 
again.  Further,  his  representations  of  the  sculptured  orna- 
ments, instead  of  being  (what  those  of  artists  too  often  are) 
mere  picturesque  approximations,  were  true  in  every  curve  and 
line.  He  told  me  he  had  spent  a  fortnight  in  tracing  out  the 
involved  mathematical  figures — curves,  circles,  and  right  lines, 
—on  which  the  intricate  fretwork  of  one  of  the  obelisks  was 
formed,  and  in  making  separate  drawings  of  each  compart- 
ment, before  commencing  his  draught  of  the  entire  stone. 
And,  looking  with  the  eye  of  a  stone-cutter  at  his  preliminary 
sketches,  from  the  first  meagre  lines  that  formed  the  ground- 
work of  some  involved  and  difficult  knot,  to  the  elaborate  knot 
itself,  I  saw  that,  with  such  a  series  of  drawings  before  me,  1 
myself  could  learn  to  cut  Runic  obelisks,  in  all  the  integrity 
of  the  complex  ancient  style,  in  less  than  a  fortnight.  My 
friend  had  formed  some  striking  and  original  views  regarding 
the  theology  represented  by  symbol  on  these  ancient  stones,— 
at  that  time  regarded  as  Runic,  but  now  held  to  be  rather  ol 


212  MY   SCHOOLS  AND  SCHOOLMASTERS  ; 

Celtic  origin.  In  the  centre  of  each  obelisk,  on  the  more  im- 
portant and  strongly  relieved  side,  there  always  occurs  a  large 
cross,  rather  of  the  Greek  than  of  the  Roman  type,  and  usually 
elaborately  wrought  into  a  fretwork,  composed  of  myriads  of 
snakes,  raised  in  some  of  the  compartments  over  half-spheres 
resembling  apples.  In  one  of  the  Ross-shire  obelisks, — that 
of  Shadwick  in  the  parish  of  Nigg, — the  cross  is  entirely  com- 
posed of  these  apple-like,  snake-covered  protuberances  ;  and 
it  was  the  belief  of  my  friend,  that  the  original  idea  of  the 
whole,  and,  indeed,  the  fundamental  idea  of  this  school  of 
sculpture,  was  exactly  that  so  emphatically  laid  down  by  Mil- 
ton in  the  opening  argument  of  his  poem, — man's  fall  symbol- 
ized by  the  serpents  and  the  apples,  and  the  great  sign  of  his 
restoration,  by  the  cross.  But  in  order  to  indicate  that  to  the 
Divine  Man,  the  Restorer,  the  cross  itself  was  a  consequence 
of  the  Fall,  even  it  was  covered  over  with  symbols  of  the 
event,  and,  in  one  curious  specimen,  built  up  of  them.  It  was 
the  snakes  and  apples  that  had  reared,  i.  e.  rendered  impera- 
tive, the  cross.  My  friend  further -remarked,  that  from  this 
main  idea  a  sort  of  fretwork  had  originated,  which  seemed 
more  modern  in  some  of  its  specimens  than  the  elaborately- 
carved  snakes  and  strongly-relieved  apples,  but  in  which  the 
twistings  of  the  one  and  the  circular  outlines  of  the  others 
might  be  distinctly  traced ;  and  that  it  seemed  ultimately  to 
have  passed  from  a  symbol  into  a  mere  ornament ;  as,  in 
earlier  instances,  hieroglyphic  pictures  had  passed  into  mere  ar- 
bitrary signs  or  characters.  I  know  not  what  may  be  thought 
of  the  theory  of  William  Ross;  but  when,  in  visiting,  sever- 
al years  ago,  the  ancient  ruins  of  Iona,  I  marked,  on  the  more 
ancient  crosses,  the  snakes  and  apparent  apples,  and  then  saw 
how  the  same  combination  of  figures  appeared  as  mere  orna- 
mental fretwork  on  some  of  the  later  tombs,  I  regarded  it  as 
more  probably  the  right  one  than  any  of  the  others  I  have 
yet  seen  broached  on  this  subject.  I  dined  with  my  friend 
this  day  on  potatoes  and  salt,  flanked  by  a  jug  of  water;  nor 
were  the  potatoes  by  any  means  very  good  ones  ;  but  they 
formed  the  only  article  of  food  in  the  household  at  the  time. 


213 

He  had  now  dined  and  breakfasted  upon  them,  he  said,  for 
several  weeks  together ;  but  though  not  very  strengthening, 
they  kept  in  the  spark  of  life ;  and  he  had  saved  up  money 
enough  to  carry  him  to  the  south  of  Scotland  in  the  spring, 
where  he  trusted  to  find  employment.  A  poor  friendless  lad 
of  genius,  diluting  his  thin  consumptive  blood  on  bad  pota 
toes  and  water,  and  at  the  same  time  anticipating  the  labors 
of  our  antiquarian  societies  by  his  elaborate  and  truthful 
drawings  of  an  interesting  class  of  national  antiquities,  must 
be  regarded  as  a  melancholy  object  of  contemplation ;  but 
such  hapless  geniuses  there  are  in  every  age  in  which  art  is 
cultivated  and  literature  has  its  admirers ;  and  shrinkingly 
modest  and  retiring  in  their  natures,  the  world  rarely  finds 
them  out  in  time. 

I  found  employment  enough  for  my  leisure  during  this  win- 
ter in  my  books  and  walks,  and  in  my  Uncle  James's  work- 
shop ;  which,  now  that  Uncle  James  had  no  longer  to  lecture 
me  about  my  Latin,  and  my  carelessness  as  a  scholar  in  general, 
was  a  very  pleasant  place,  where  a  great  deal  of  sound  remark 
and  excellent  information  were  always  to  be  had.  There  was 
another  dwelling  in  the  neighborhood  in  which  I  sometimes 
spent  a  not  unpleasant  hour.  It  was  a  damp  underground 
room,  inhabited  by  a  poor  old  woman  who  had  come  to  the 
town  from  a  country  parish  in  the  previous  year,  bringing  with 
her  a  miserably  deformed  lad,  her  son,  who,  though  now  turned 
of  twenty,  more  resembled,  save  in  his  head  and  face,  a  boy  of 
ten,  and  who  was  so  helpless  a  cripple,  that  he  could  not  move 
from  off  his  seat.  ;'  Poor  lame  Danie,"  as  he  was  termed, 
was,  notwithstanding  the  hard  measure  dealt  him  by  nature, 
an  even-tempered,  kindly-dispositioned  lad,  and  was,  in  conse 
quence,  a  great  favorite  with  the  young  people  in  the  neigh 
borhood,  especially  with  the  humbly  taught  young  women, 
who — regarding  him  simply  as  an  intelligence,  coupled  with 
sympathies,  that  could  write  letters — used  to  find  him  employ- 
ment, which  he  liked  not  a  little,  as  a  sort  of  amanuensis  and 
adviser-general  in  their  affairs  of  the  heart.  Richardson  tells 
that  he  learned  to  write  his  Pamela  by  the  practice  he  ae- 


214 

quired  in  writing  love-letters,  when  a  very  young  lad,  for  half 
a  score  love-sick  females,  who  trusted  and  employed  him. 
"  Poor  Danie,"  though  he  bore  on  a  skeleton  body,  wholly 
unfurnished  with  muscle,  a  brain  of  the  average  size  and  ac- 
tivity, was  not  born  to  be  a  novelist ;  but  he  had  the  necessa- 
ry materials  in  abundance ;  and,  though  secret  enough  to 
all  his  other  acquaintance,  I,  who  cared  not  a  great  deal  about 
the  matter,  might,  I  found,  have  as  many  of  his  experiences 
as  I  pleased.  I  enjoyed  among  my  companions  the  reputa* 
tion  of  being  what  they  termed  "  close-minded ;"  and  Danie, 
satisfied,  in  some  sort,  that  I  deserved  the  character,  seemed 
to  find  it  a  relief  to  roll  over  upon  my  shoulders  the  great 
weight  of  confidence  which,  rather  liberally,  as  would  seem, 
for  his  comfort,  had  been  laid  upon  his  own.  It  is  recorded 
of  himself  by  Burns,  that  he  "  felt  as  much  pleasure  in  being 
in  the  secret  of  half  the  loves  of  the  parish  of  Tarbolton,  as 
ever  did  statesman  in  knowing  the  intrigues  of  half  the 
Courts  of  Europe."  And,  writing  to  Dr.  Moore,  he  adds  that 
it  was  "  with  difficulty  "  his  pen  was  "  restrained  from  giving 
him  a  couple  of  paragraphs  on  the  love-adventures  of  his  com- 
peers, the  humble  inmates  of  the  farm-house  and  cottage." 
I,  on  the  other  hand,  bore  my  confidence  soberly  enough,  and 
kept  them  safe  and  very  close, — regarding  myself  as  merely 
a  sort  of  back-yard  of  mind,  in  which  Danie  might  store  up 
at  pleasure  the  precious  commodities  entrusted  to  his  charge, 
which,  from  want  of  stowage,  it  cumbered  him  to  keep,  but 
which  were  his  property,  not  mine.  And  though,  I  dare  say, 
I  could  still  fill  more  than  "a  couple  of  paragraphs  "  with  the 
love-affairs  of  townswomen,  some  of  whose  daughters  were 
courted  and  married  ten  years  ago,  I  feel  no  inclination  what- 
ever, after  having  kept  their  secrets  so  long,  to  begin  blabbing 
them  now.  Danie  kept  a  draft-board,  and  used  to  take  a 
pride  in  beating  all  his  neighbors ;  but  in  a  short  time  he 
taught  me — too  palpably  to  his  chagrin — to  beat  himself;  and 
finding  the  game  a  rather  engrossing  one  besides,  and  not 
caring  to  look  on  the  woe-begone  expression  that  used  to 
cloud  the  meek  pale  face  of  my  poor  acquaintance,  every 


OR,    THE   STORY   OF   MY   EDUCATION.  215 

time  he  found  his  men  swept  off  the  board  or  cooped  up  into 
a  corner,  I  gave  up  drafts,  the  only  game  of  the  kind  of 
which  I  ever  knew  anything,  and  in  the  course  of  a  few  years 
succeeded  in  unlearning  pretty  completely  all  the  moves.  It 
appeared  wonderful  that  the  processes  essential  to  life  could 
have  been  carried  on  in  so  miserable  a  piece  of  frame-work 
as  the  person  of  poor  Danie  :  it  was  simply  a  human  skeleton 
bent  double,  and  covered  with  a  sallow  skin.  But  they  were 
not  carried  on  in  it  long.  About  eighteen  months  after  the 
first  commencement  of  our  acquaintance,  when  I  was  many 
miles  away,  he  was  seized  by  a  sudden  illness,  and  died  in  a 
few  hours.  I  have  seen,  in  even  our  better  w^rks  of  fiction, 
less  interesting  characters  portrayed  than  poor,  gentle-spirited 
Danie,  the  love-depository  of  the  young  dames  of  the  village ; 
and  I  learned  a  thing  or  two  in  his  school. 

It  was  not  until  after  several  weeks  of  the  working  season 
had  passed,  that  my  master's  great  repugnance  to  doing  nothing 
overcame  his  almost  equally  great  repugnance  again  to  seek 
work  as  a  journeyman.  At  length,  however,  a  life  of  inac- 
tivity became  wholly  intolerable  to  him  ;  and,  applying  to  his 
former  employer,  he  was  engaged  on  the  previous  terms, — 
full  wages  for  himself,  and  a  very  small  allowance  for  his  ap- 
prentice, who  was  now,  however,  recognized  as  the  readier  and 
more  skilful  stone-cutter  of  the  two.  In  cutting  mouldings  of 
the  more  difficult  kinds,  I  had  sometimes  to  take  the  old  man 
under  charge,  and  give  him  lessons  in  the  art,  from  which, 
however,  he  had  become  rather  too  rigid  in  both  mind  and 
body  greatly  to  profit  We  both  returned  to  Conon-side, 
where  there  was  a  tall  dome  of  hewn  rock  to  be  erected  over 
the  main  archway  of  the  steading  at  which  we  had  been  en- 
gaged during  the  previous  year ;  and  as  few  of  the  workmen 
had  yet  assembled  on  the  spot,  we  succeeded  in  establishing 
ourselves  as  inmates  of  the  barrack,  leaving  the  hay-loft,  with 
its  inferior  accommodation,  to  the  later-comers.  We  con- 
structed for  ourselves  a  bed-frame  of  rough  slabs,  and  filled  it 
with  hay ;  placed  our  chests  in  front  of  it ;  and,  as  the  rats 
mustered  by  thousands  in  the  place,  suspended  our  sack  of 


216 

oatmeal  by  a  rope,  from  one  of  the  naked  rafters,  at  rathei 
more  than  a  man's  height  over  the  floor.  And,  having  both 
pot  and  pitcher,  our  household  economy  was  complete.  Though 
resolved  not  to  forego  my  evening  walks,  I  had  determined  to 
conform  also  to  every  practice  of  the  barrack ;  and  as  the 
workmen  drafted  from  various  parts  of  the  country,  gradually 
increased  around  us,  and  the  place  became  crowded,  I  soon 
ound  myself  engaged  in  the  rolicking  barrack-life  of  the  north- 
•,ountry  mason.  The  rats  were  somewhat  troublesome.  A 
comrade  who  slept  in  the  bed  immediately  beside  ours  had 
one  of  his  ears  bitten  through  one  night  as  he  lay  asleep,  and 
remarked  that  he  supposed  it  would  be  his  weasand  they 
would  attack  next  time ;  and  on  rising  one  morning,  I  found 
that  the  four  brightly  plated  jack-buttons  to  which  my  braces 
had  been  fastened,  had  been  fairly  cut  from  off  my  trousers, 
and  carried  away,  to  form,  I  doubt  not,  a  portion  of  some 
miser  hoard  in  the  wall.  But  even  the  rats  themselves  be- 
came a  source  of  amusement  to  us,  and  imparted  to  our  rude 
domicile,  in  some  little  degree,  the  dignity  of  danger.  It  was 
not  likely  that  they  would  succeed  in  eating  us  all  up,  as  they 
had  done  wicked  Bishop  Hatto,  of  old ;  but  it  was  at  least 
something  that  they  had  begun  to  try. 

The  dwellers  in  the  hay -loft  had  not  been  admitted  in  the 
previous  season  to  the  full  privileges  of  the  barrack,  nor  had 
they  been  required  to  share  in  all  its  toils  and  duties.  They 
nad  to  provide  their  quota  of  wood  for  the  fire,  and  of  water 
for  general  household  purposes ;  but  they  had  not  to  take  their 
turn  of  cooking  and  baking  for  the  entire  mess,  but  were  per- 
mitted, as  convenience  served,  to  cook  and  bake  for  them- 
selves. And  so,  till  now,  I  had  made  cakes  and  porridge, 
with  at  times  an  occasional  mess  of  brose  or  brochan,  for  only 
my  master  and  myself, — a  happy  arrangement,  which,  I  dare 
say,  saved  me  a  few  rammings  ;  seeing  that,  in  at  least  my 
earlier  efforts,  I  had  been  rather  unlucky  as  a  cook,  and  not 
very  fortunate  as  a  baker.  My  experience  in  the  Cromarty 
caves  had  rendered  me  skilful  in  both  boiling  and  roasting 
potatoes,  and  in  preparing  shell-fish  for  the  table,  whether 


OR,  THE   STOKY   OF   MY   EDUCATION.  217 

molluscous  or  crustacean,  according  to  the  most  approved 
methods  ;  but  the  exigencies  of  our  wild  life  had  never  brought 
me  fairly  in  contact  with  the  ceralia  ;  and  I  had  now  to  spoil 
a  meal  or  two,  in  each  instance,  ere  my  porridge  became  pal- 
atable, or  my  cakes  crisp,  or  my  brose  free  and  knotty,  or  my 
brochan  sufficiently  smooth  and  void  of  knots.  My  master, 
poor  man,  did  grumble  a  little  at  first ;  but  there  was  a  gene- 
ral disposition  in  the  barrack  to  take  part  rather  with  his  ap- 
prentice than  with  himself;  and  after  finding  that  the  cases 
were  to  be  given  against  him,  he  ceased  making  complaints. 
My  porridge  was  at  times,  I  must  confess,  very  like  leaven ; 
but  then,  it  was  a  standing  recipe  in  the  barrack,  that  the  cook 
should  continue  stirring  the  mess  and  adding  meal,  until,  from 
its  first  wild  ebullitions  in  full  boil,  it  became  silent  over  the 
fire  ;  and  so  I  could  show  that  I  had  made  my  porridge  like 
leaven,  quite  according  to  rule.  And  as  for  my  brochan.  I  suc- 
ceeded in  proving  that  I  had  actually  tailed  to  satisfy,  though 
I  had  made  two  kinds  of  it  at  once  in  the  same  pofc.  I  pre- 
ferred this  viand  when  of  a  thicker  consistency  than  usual, 
whereas  my  master  liked  it  thin  enough  to  be  drunk  out  of 
the  bowl ;  but  as  it  was  I  who  had  the  making  of  it,  I  used 
more  instead  of  less  meal  than  ordinary,  and  unluckily,  in  my 
first  experiment,  mixed  up  the  meal  in  a  very  small  bowl.  It 
became  a  dense  dough-like  mass  ;  and  on  emptying  it  into  the 
pot,  instead  of  incorporating  with  the  boiling  water,  it  sank  in 
a  solid  cake  to  the  bottom.  In  vain  I  stirred,  and  manipu- 
lated, and  kept  up  the  fire.  The  stubborn  mass  refused  to 
separate  or  dilute,  and  at  length  burnt  brown  against  the  bot- 
tom of  the  pot, — a  hue  which  the  gruel-like  fluid  which  float- 
ed over  also  assumed  ;  and  at  length,  in  utter  despair  of  se- 
curing aught  approaching  to  an  average  consistency  for  the 
whole,  and  hearing  my  master's  foot  at  the  door,  I  took  the 
pot  from  off  the  fire,  and  dished  up  for  supper  a  portion  of 
the  thinner  mixture  which  it  contained,  and  which,  \n  at  least 
coloi  and  consistency,  not  a  little  resembled  chocolate.  The 
poor  man  ladled  the  stuff  in  utter  dismay.  "  Od.  laddie,"  he 
said,  "  what  ca'  ye  tins'?     Ca'  ve  this  brochan  ?"     "  Ony thing 


218  MY  SCHOOLS  AND  SCHOOLMASTERS  J 

ye  like  master,"  I  replied  ;  "  but  there  are  two  kinds  m  the 
pot,  and  it  will  go  hard  if  none  of  them  please  you."  I  then 
dished  him  a  piece  of  the  cake,  somewhat  resembling  in  size 
and  consistency  a  small  brown  dumpling,  which  he  of  course 
found  wholly  unedible,  and  became  angry.  But  this  bad  earth 
of  ours  "  is  filled,"  according  to  Cowper,  u  with  wrong  and 
outrage ;"  and  the  barrack  laughed  and  took  part  with  the  de- 
faulter. Experience,  however,  that  does  so  much  for  all,  did 
a  little  for  me.  I  at  length  became  a  tolerably  fair  plain  cook, 
and  a  not  very  bad  baker ;  and  now,  when  the  exigencies  re- 
quired that  I  should  take  my  full  share  in  the  duties  of  the 
barrack,  I  was  found  adequate  to  their  proper  fulfilment.  I 
made  cakes  and  porridge  of  fully  the  average  excellence;  and 
my  brose  and  brockan  enjoyed  at  least  the  negative  happiness 
of  escaping  animadversion  and  comment. 

Some  of  the  inmates,  however,  who  were  exceedingly  nice 
in  their  eating,  were  great  connoisseurs  in  porridge  ;  and  it 
was  no  easy  matter  to  please  them.  There  existed  unsettled 
differences — the  results  of  a  diversity  of  tastes — regarding  the 
time  that  should  be  given  to  the  boiling  of  the  mess,  respect- 
ing the  proportion  of  salt  that  should  be  allotted  to  each  indi- 
vidual, and  as  to  whether  the  process  of  "  mealing,"  as  it  was 
termed,  should  be  a  slow  or  a  hasty  one  ;  and,  of  course,  as 
in  all  controversies  of  all  kinds,  the  more  the  matters  in  dis- 
pute were  discussed,  the  more  did  they  grow  in  importance. 
Occasionally  the  disputants  had  their  porridge  made  at  the 
same  time  in  the  same  pot ;  there  were,  in  especial,  two  of  the 
workmen  who  differed  upon  the  degree-of-salt  question,  whose 
bickers  were  supplied  from  the  same  general  preparation ;  and 
as  these  had  usually  opposite  complaints  to  urge  against  the 
cooking,  their  objections  served  so  completely  to  neutralize 
each  other,  that  they  in  no  degree  told  against  the  cook.  One 
morning  the  cook, — a  wag  and  a  favorite, — in  making  por- 
ridge for  both  the  controversialists,  made  it  so  exceedingly 
fresh  as  to  be  but  little  removed  from  a  poultice ;  and,  filling 
with  the  preparation  in  this  state  the  bicker  of  the  salt-loving 
connoisseur,  he  then  took  a  handful  of  salt,  and  mixing  it  with 


219 

the  portion  which  remained  in  the  pot,  poured  into  the  bicker 
of  the  fresh-man,  porridge  very  much  akin  to  a  pickle.  Both 
entered  the  barrack  sharply  set  for  breakfast,  and  sat  down 
each  to  his  meal ;  and  both  at  the  first  spoonful  dropped  their 
spoons.  "  A  ramming  to  the  cook  !'  cried  the  one, — "  he  has 
given  me  porridge  without  salt !"  "  A  ramming  to  the  cook  !" 
roared  out  the  other, — "  he  has  given  me  porridge  like  brine !" 
"  You  see  lads,"  said  the  cook,  stepping  out  into  the  middle  of 
the  floor,  with  the  air  of  a  much-injured  orator, — "you  see, 
lads,  what  matters  have  come  to  at  last ;  there  is  the  very  pot 
in  which  I  made  in  one  mess  the  porridge  in  both  their  bickers. 
I  don't  think  we  should  bear  this  any  longer  ;  we  have  all  had 
our  turn  of  it,  though  mine  happens  to  be  the  worst  ;  and  I 
now  move  that  these  two  fellows  be  rammed."  No  sooner  said 
than  done.  There  was  a  terrible  struggling,  and  a  burning 
sense  of  injustice  ;  but  no  single  man  in  the  barrack  was  match 
for  half-a-dozen  of  the  others.  The  disputants,  too,  instead  of 
making  common  cause  together,  were  prepared  to  assist  in 
ramming  each  the  other  ;  and  so  rammed  they  both  were. 
And  at  length,  when  the  details  of  the  stratagem  came  out, 
the  cook — by  escaping  for  half  an  hour  into  the  neighboring 
wood,  and  concealing  himself  there,  like  some  political  exile 
under  ban  of  the  Government — succeeded  in  escaping  the 
merited  punishment. 

The  cause  of  justice  was  never,  I  found,  in  greater  danger 
in  our  little  community,  than  when  a  culprit  succeeded  in  get- 
ting the  laughers  on  his  side.  I  have  said  that  I  became  a 
not  very  bad  baker.  Still  less  and  less  sorely,  as  I  improved 
in  this  useful  art,  did  my  cakes  try  the  failing  teeth  of  my 
master,  until  at  length  they  became  crisp  and  nice  ;  and  he 
began  to  find  that  my  new  accomplishment  was  working  se- 
rious effects  upon  the  contents  of  his  meal-chest.  With  a 
keenly  whet  appetite,  and  in  vigorous  health,  I  was  eating  a 
great  deal  of  bread  ;  and,  after  a  good  deal  of  grumbling,  he 
at  length  laid  it  down  as  law  that  I  should  restrict  myself  for 
the  future  to  two  cakes  per  week.  I  at  once  agreed ;  but  the 
general  barrack,  to  whose  ears  some  of  my  master's  remon- 


220  MY  SCHOOLS  AND  SCHOOLMASTERS 


strances  had  found  their  way,  was  dissatisfied;  and  it  muld 
probably  have  overturned  in  conclave  our  agreement,  and 
punished  the  old  man,  my  master,  for  the  niggardly  stringency 
of  his  terms,  had  I  not  craved,  by  way  of  special  favor,  to  be 
permitted  to  give  them  a  week's  trial.  One  evening  early 
in  the  week,  when  the  old  man  had  gone  out,  I  mixed  up  the 
better  part  of  a  peck  of  meal  in  a  pot,  and,  placing  two  of 
the  larger  chests  together  in  the  same  plane,  kneaded  it  out 
into  an  enormous  cake,  at  least  equal  in  area  to  an  ordinary- 
sized  Newcastle  grindstone.  I  then  cut  it  up  into  about  twenty 
pieces,  and,  forming  a  vast  semicircle  of  stones  round  the  fire, 
raised  the  pieces  to  the  heat  in  a  continuous  row,  some  five  or 
six  feet  in  length.  I  had  ample  and  ready  assistance  vouch- 
safed me  in  the  "  firing," — half  the  barrack  were  engaged  in 
the  work, — when  my  master  entered,  and,  after  scanning  our 
employment  in  utter  astonishment, — now  glancing  at  the  ring 
of  meal  which  still  remained  on  the  united  chests,  to  testify  to 
the  huge  proportions  of  the  disparted  bannock, — and  now  at 
the  cones,  squares,  rhombs,  and  trapeziums  of  cake  that  har- 
dened to  the  heat  in  front  of  the  fire,  he  abruptly  asked, — 
"  What's  this,  laddie  1 — are  ye  baking  for  a  wadding  1"  "  Just 
baking  one  of  the  two  cakes,  master,"  I  replied  ;  ;'  I  don't 
think  we'll  need  the  other  one  before  Saturday  night."  A 
roar  of  laughter  from  every  corner  of  the  barrack  precluded 
reply ;  and  in  the  laughter,  after  an  embarrassed  pause,  the 
poor  man  had  the  good  sense  to  join.  And  during  the  rest 
of  the  season  I  baked  as  often  and  as  much  as  I  pleased.  It 
is,  I  believe,  Goldsmith  who  remarks,  that  "  wit  generally  suc- 
ceeds more  from  being  happily  addressed,  than  from  its  na- 
tive poignancy,"  and  that  "  a  jest  calculated  to  spread  at  a 
gaming  table,  may  be  received  with  perfect  indifference  should 
it  happen  to  drop  in  a  mackerel-boat."  On  Goldsmith's  prin- 
ciple, the  joke  of  what  was  termed,  from  the  well-known  fairy 
tale,  "  the  big  bannock  wi'  the  Malison,"  could  have  perhaps 
succeeded  in  only  a  masons'  barrack  ;  but  never  there  at  least 
could  joke  have  been  more  successful. 

As  I  had  not  y?t  ascertained  that  the  Old  Red  Sandstona 


OR,   THE  STORY  OF   MY  EDUCATION.  221 

of  the  north  of  Scotland  is  richly  fossiliferous,  Conon-side  and 
its  neighborhood  furnished  me  with  no  very  favorable  field 
for  geological  exploration.  It  enabled  me,  however,  to  extend 
my  acquaintance  with  the  great  conglomerate  base  of  the  sys- 
tem, which  forms  here,  as  I  have  already  said,  a  sort  of  minia- 
ture Highlands,  extending  between  the  valleys  of  the  Conon 
and  the  Pefler,  and  which, — remarkable  for  its  picturesque 
cliffs,  abrupt  eminences,  and  narrow  steep-sided  dells, — bear, 
in  its  centre  a  pretty  wood-skirted  loch,  into  which  the  old 
Celtic  prophet  Kenneth  Ore,  when,  like  Prospero,  he  relin- 
quished his  art,  buried  "  deep  beyond  plummet  sound"  the 
magic  stone  in  which  he  was  wont  to  see  both  the  distant  and 
the  future.  Immediately  over  the  pleasure-grounds  of  Brahan, 
the  rock  forms  exactly  such  cliffs  as  the  landscape  gardener 
would  make,  if  he  could, — cliffs  with  their  rude  prominent 
pebbles  breaking  the  light  over  every  square  foot  of  surface, 
and  furnishing  footing,  by  their  innumerable  projections,  to 
many  a  green  tuft  of  moss,  and  many  a  sweet  little  flower  ; 
while  far  below,  among  the  deep  woods,  there  stand  up  enor- 
mous fragments  of  the  same  rock,  that  must  have  rolled  down 
in  some  remote  age  from  the  precipices  above,  and  which, 
mossy  and  hoar,  and  many  of  them  ivy -bound,  resemble  arti- 
ficial ruins, — obnoxious,  however,  to  none  of  the  disparaging 
associations  which  the  make-believe  ruin  is  sure  always  to 
awaken.  It  was  inexpressibly  pleasant  to  spend  a  quiet  even- 
ing hour  among  these  wild  cliffs,  and  imagine  a  time  when  the 
far  distant  sea  beat  against  their  bases  ;  but  though  their  en- 
closed pebbles  evidently  owed  their  rounded  form  to  the  attri- 
tion of  water,  the  imagination  seemed  paralyzed  when  it  at- 
tempted calling  up  a  still  earlier  time,  when  these  solid  rocks 
existed  but  as  loose  sand  and  pebbles,  tossed  by  waves  or  scat- 
tered by  currents  ;  and  when,  for  hundreds  and  thousands  of 
square  miles,  the  wild  tract  around  existed  as  an  ancient  ocean, 
skirted  by  unknown  lands.  I  had  not  yet  collected  enough  of 
geologic  fact  to  enable  me  to  grapple  with  the  difficulties  of  a 
restoration  of  the  more  ancient  time.  There  was  a  later 
period,  also  represented  in  the  immediate  neighborhood  by  a 


222 

thick  deposit  of  stratified  sand,  of  which  I  knew  as  little  as  of  the 
conglomerate.  We  dug  into  it,  in  founding  a  thrashing-mill,  for 
about  ten  feet,  but  came  to  no  bottom ;  and  I  could  see  that  it 
formed  the  subsoil  of  the  valley  all  around  the  policies  of  Conon- 
side,  and  underlay  most  of  its  fields  and  woods.  It  was  white 
and  pure,  as  if  it  had  been  washed  by  the  sea  only  a  few  weeks 
previous ;  but  in  vain  did  I  search  its  beds  and  layers  for  a  frag- 
ment of  shell  by  which  to  determine  its  age.  I  can  now,  how- 
ever, entertain  little  doubt  that  it  belonged  to  the  boulder-clay 
period  of  submergence,  and  that  the  fauna  with  which  it  was 
associated  bore  the  ordinary  sub-arctic  character.  When  this 
stratified  sand  was  deposited,  the  waves  must  have  broken 
against  the  conglomerate  precipices  of  Brahan,  and  the  sea 
have  occupied,  as  friths  and  sounds,  the  deep  Highland  valleys 
of  the  interior.  And  on  such  of  the  hills  of  the  country  as  had 
their  heads  above  water  at  the  time,  that  interesting  but  some- 
what meagre  Alpine  Flora  must  have  flourished,  which  we  now 
find  restricted  to  our  higher  mountain  summits. 

Once  every  six  weeks  I  wras  permitted  to  visit  Cromarty, 
and  pass  a  Sabbath  there  ;  but  as  my  master  usually  accom- 
panied me,  and  as  the  way  proved  sufficiently  long  and  weary 
to  press  upon  his  failing  strength  and  stiffening  limbs,  we  had 
to  restrict  ourselves  to  the  beaten  road,  and  saw  but  little. 
On,  however,  one  occasion  this  season,  I  journeyed  alone,  and 
spent  so  happy  a  day  in  finding  my  homeward  road  along 
blind  paths, — that  ran  now  along  the  rocky  shores  of  the  Cro- 
marty Frith  in  its  upper  reaches,  now  through  brown,  lonely 
moors,  mottled  with  Danish  encampments,  and  now  beside 
quiet,  tomb-besprinkled  bury ing-grounds,  and  the  broken  walls 
of  deserted  churches, — that  its  memory  still  lives  freshly  in  my 
mind,  as  one  of  the  happiest  of  my  life.  I  passed  whole  hours 
among  the  ruins  of  Craighouse, — a  gray  fantastic  rag  of  a 
castle,  consisting  of  four  heavily-arched  stories  of  time-eaten 
stone,  piled  over  each  other,  and  still  bearing  atop  its  stone 
roof  and  its  ornate  turrets  and  bartizans, — 

"A  ghastly  prison,  that  eternally 
Hangs  its  blind  visage  out  to  the  lone  s?a." 


OK,   THE   STORY   OF  MY  EDUCATION.  223 

It  was  said  in  these  days  to  be  haunted  by  its  goblin, — a  mis- 
erable-looking, gray-headed,  gray-bearded,  little  old  man,  that 
might  occasionally  be  seen  late  in  the  evening,  or  early  in  the 
morning,  peering  out  through  some  arrow-slit  or  shot-hole  at 
the  chance  passenger.  I  remember  getting  the  whole  history 
of  the  goblin  this  day  from  a  sun-burnt  herd-boy,  whom  I 
found  tending  his  cattle  under  the  shadow  of  the  old  castle- 
wall.  I  began  by  asking  him  whose  apparition  he  thought  it 
was  that  could  continue  to  haunt  a  building,  the  very  name 
of  whose  last  inhabitant  had  been  long  since  forgotten.  "  0, 
they're  saying"  was  the  reply,  "  it's  the  spirit  of  the  man  that 
was  killed  on  the  foundation-stone,  just  after  it  was  laid,  and 
then  built  intil  the  wa'  by  the  masons,  that  he  might  keep  the 
castle  by  coming  back  again  ;  and  they're  saying  that  a'  the 
verra  auld  houses  in  the  kintra  had  murderit  men  builded  intil 
them  in  that  way,  and  that  they  have  a'  o'  them  their  bogle." 
I  recognized  in  the  boy's  account  of  the  matter  an  old  and 
widely-spread  tradition,  which,  whatever  may  have  been  its 
original  basis  of  truth,  seems  to  have  so  far  influenced  the 
buccaneers  of  the  17th  century,  as  to  have  become  a  reality  in 
their  hands.  "  If  time,"  says  Sir  Walter  Scott,  "  did  not  per- 
mit the  buccaneers  to  lavish  away  their  plunder  in  their  usual 
debaucheries,  they  were  wont  to  hide  it,  with  many  supersti- 
tious solemnities,  in  the  desert  islands  and  keys  which  they 
frequented,  and  where  much  treasure,  whose  lawless  owners 
perished  without  reclaiming  it,  is  still  supposed  to  be  concealed. 
The  most  cruel  of  mankind  are  often  the  most  superstitious  ; 
and  those  pirates  are  said  to  have  had  recourse  to  a  horrid 
ritual,  in  order  to  secure  an  unearthly  guardian  to  their  treas- 
ures. They  killed  a  negro  or  Spaniard,  and  buried  him  with 
the  treasure,  believing  that  his  spirit  would  haunt  the  spot, 
and  terrify  away  all  intruders."  There  is  a  figurative  peeuli- 
arity  in  the  language  in  which  Joshua  denounced  the  man  who 
should  dare  rebuild  Jericho,  that  seems  to  point  at  some  an- 
cient pagan  rite  of  this  kind.  Nor  does  it  seem  improbable 
that  a  practice  which  existed  in  times  so  little  remote  as  those 
of  the  buccaneers  may  have  first  begun  in  the  dark  and  cruel 


224  MY  SCHOOLS  AND   SCHOOLMASTERS  ; 

ages  of  human  saci  fice.  "Cursed  be  the  man  before  the 
Lord,"  said  Joshua,  "that  riseth  up  and  buildeth  this  city  of 
Jericho  :  he  shall  lay  the  foundation  thereof  in  his  first-born, 
and  in  his  youngest  son  shall  he  set  rp  the  gates  of  it.'''' 

The  large-farm  system  had  been  already  introduced  into 
the  part  of  the  country  in  which  I  at  this  time  resided,  on  the 
richer  and  more  level  lands ;  but  many  a  Gaelic-speaking  cot- 
ter and  small  tenant  still  lived  on  the  neighboring  moors  and 
hill-sides.  Though  Highland  in  their  surnames  and  language, 
they  bore  a  character  considerably  different  from  that  of  the 
simpler  Highlanders  of  the  interior  of  Sutherland,  or  of  a  class 
I  had  shortly  afterwards  an  opportunity  of  studying — the  High- 
landers of  the  western  coast  of  Ross-shire.  Doors  were  not  left 
unbarred  at  night  in  the  neighborhood  ;  and  there  were  wretch- 
ed hovels  among  the  moors,  very  zealously  watched  and  guard- 
ed indeed.  There  was  much  illicit  distillation  and  smuggling 
at  this  time  among  the  Gaelic-speaking  people  of  the  district ; 
and  it  told  upon  their  character  with  the  usual  deteriorating 
effect.  Many  of  the  Highlanders,  too,  had  wrought  as  labor- 
ers at  the  Caledonian  Canal,  where  they  had  come  in  contact 
with  south-country  workmen,  and  had  brought  back  with  them 
a  confident,  loquacious  smartness,  that,  based  on  a  ground- 
work of  ignorance,  which  it  rendered  active  and  obtrusive,  had 
a  bizarre  and  disagreeable  effect,  and  formed  but  an  indifferent 
substitute  for  the  diffident  and  taciturn  simplicity  which  it  had 
supplanted.  But  I  have  ever  found  the  people  of  those  border 
districts  of  the  Highlands  which  join  on  to  the  low  country,  or 
that  inhabit  districts  much  traversed  by  tourists,  of  a  com- 
paratively inferior  cast :  the  finer  qualities  of  the  Highland 
character  seem  easily  injured :  the  hospitality,  the  simplicity, 
the  unsuspecting  honesty  disappear ;  and  we  find,  instead,  a 
people  rapacious,  suspicious,  and  unscrupulous,  considerably 
beneath  the  Lowland  average.  In  all  the  unopened  districts 
of  the  remote  Highlands  into  which  I  have  penetrated,  I  have 
found  the  people  strongly  engage  my  sympathies  and  affec- 
tions,— much  more  strongly  than  in  any  part  of  the  Lowlands ; 
whereas,  on  the  contrary,  in  the  deteriorated  districts  I  have 


225 

been  sensible  of  an  involuntary  revulsion  of  feeling,  when  in 
contact  with  the  altered  race  of  -which,  among  the  low-coun- 
try Scotch  or  the  English,  I  have  had  no  experience.  I  re- 
member being  impressed,  in  reading,  many  years  ago,  one  of 
Miss  Ferrier's  novels,  with  the  truth  of  a  stroke  that  brought 
out  very  practically  the  ready  susceptibility  of  injury  mani- 
fested by  the  Celtic  character.  Some  visitors  of  condition 
from  the  Highlands  are  represented  as  seeking  out,  in  one  of 
our  larger  towns  of  the  south,  a  simple  Highland  lad,  who 
had  quitted  a  remote  northern  district  only  a  few  months  be- 
fore ;  and  when  they  find  him,  it  is  as  a  prisoner  in  Bridewell. 
Towards  the  end  of  September,  my  master,  who  had  wholly 
failed  in  overcoming  his  repugnance  to  labor  as  a  mere  jour- 
neyman, succeeded  in  procuring  a  piece  of  work  by  contract, 
in  a  locality  about  fourteen  miles  nearer  our  home  than  Co- 
non-side,  and  I  accompanied  him  to  assist  in  its  completion. 
Our  employment  in  our  new  scene  of  labor  was  of  the  most 
disagreeable  kind.  Burns,  who  must  have  had  a  tolerably  ex- 
tensive experience  of  the  evils  of  hard  work,  specifies  in  his 
"  Twa  Dogs"  three  kinds  of  labor  in  especial  that  give  poor 
"  cot-folk"  "  fash  enough." 

"Trowth,  Cresar,  whiles  they're  fash'd  enough ; 
A  cottar  howkin  in  a  sheugh, 
Wi'  dirty  stanes  biggin  a  dyke, 
Baring  a  quaary,  and  sic  like." 

All  very  disagreeable  employments,  as  I  also  can  testify ;  and 
our  work  here  unfortunately  combined  the  whole  three.  We 
were  engaged  in  rebuilding  one  of  those  old-fashioned  walls  of 
gentlemen's  pleasure-grounds  known  as  "  ha  has"  that  line  the 
sides  of  deep  ditches,  and  raise  their  tops  to  but  the  level  of 
the  sward ;  and  as  the  ditch  in  this  special  instance  was  a  wet 
one,  and  as  we  had  to  clear  it  of  the  old  fallen  materials,  and 
to  dig  it  out  for  our  new  line  of  foundation,  while  at  the  same 
time  we  had  to  furnish  ourselves  with  additional  materials 
from  a  neighboring  quarry,  we  had  at  once  the  "  baring  of 
the  marry,"  the  "  howkin  in  the  sheugh,"  and  the  "  biggin  of 


226 

the  dyke  wi'  dirty  stanes,"  to  "  fash"  us.  The  last-named  em 
ployment  is  by  far  the  most  painful  and  trying.  In  most  kinds 
of  severe  labor  the  skin  thickens,  and  the  hand  hardens,  through 
a  natural  provision,  to  suit  the  requirements  of  the  task  im- 
posed, and  yield  the  necessary  protection  to  the  integuments 
below ;  but  the  "  dirty  stanes"  of  the  dyke-builder,  when  wet 
as  well  as  dirty,  try  the  reproductive  powers  of  the  cuticle 
too  severely,  and  wear  it  off,  so  that  under  the  rough  friction 
the  quick  is  laid  bare.  On  this  occasion,  and  on  at  least  one 
other,  when  engaged  in  building  in  a  wet  season  in  the  West- 
ern Highlands,  1  had  all  my  fingers  oozing  blood  at  once  ;  and 
those  who  think  that  in  such  circumstances  labor  protracted 
throughout  a  long  day  can  be  other  than  torture,  would  do 
well  to  try.  How  these  poor  hands  of  mine  burnt  and  beat 
at  night  at  this  time,  as  if  an  unhappy  heart  had  been  station- 
ed in  every  finger !  and  what  cold  chills  used  to  run,  sudden 
as  electric  shocks,  through  the  feverish  frame ! 

My  general  health,  too,  had  become  far  from  strong.  As  I 
had  been  almost  entirely  engaged  in  hewing  for  the  two  pre- 
vious seasons,  the  dust  of  the  stone,  inhaled  at  every  breath, 
had  exerted  the  usual  weakening  effects  on  the  lungs, — those 
effects  under  which  the  life  of  the  stone  cutter  is  restricted  to 
about  forty -five  years  ;  but  it  was  only  now,  when  working 
day  after  day  with  wet  feet  in  a  water-logged  ditch,  that  I  be- 
gan to  be  sensibly  informed,  by  a  dull,  depressing  pain  in  the 
chest,  and  a  blood-stained,  mucoidal  substance,  expectorated 
with  difficulty,  that  I  had  already  caught  harm  from  my  em- 
ployment, and  that  my  term  of  life  might  fall  far  short  of  the 
average  one.  I  resolved,  however,  as  the  last  year  of  my  ap- 
prenticeship was  fast  drawing  to  its  close,  to  complete,  at  all 
hazards,  my  engagement  with  my  master.  It  had  been  mere 
ly  a  verbal  agreement,  and  I  might  have  broken  it  without 
blame,  when,  unable  to  furnish  me  with  work  in  his  character 
as  a  master-mason,  he  had  to  transfer  my  labor  to  another ; 
but  I  had  determined  not  to  break  it,  all  the  more  doggedly 
from  the  circumstance  that  my  Uncle  James,  in  a  moment  of 
irritation,  had  said  at  its  commencement,  that  he  feared  I 


227 

would  no  more  persist  in  being  a  mason  than  I  had  done  in 
being  a  scholar ;  and  so  I  wrought  perseveringly  on  ;  and 
slowly  and  painfully,  rood  after  rood,  the  wall  grew  up  under 
our  hands.  My  poor  master,  who  suffered  even  more  from 
chopped  hands  and  bleeding  fingers  than  I  did,  was  cross  and 
fretful,  and  sometimes  sought  relief  in  finding  fault  with  his 
apprentice ;  but,  sobered  by  my  forebodings  of  an  early  death, 
I  used  to  make  no  reply;  and  the  hasty,  ill-tempered  express- 
ions in  which  he  gave  vent  virtually  to  but  his  sense  of  pain 
and  discomfort,  were  almost  always  followed  by  some  concilia- 
tory remark.  Superstition  takes  a  strong  hold  of  the  mind  in 
circumstances  such  as  those  in  which  I  was  at  this  time  placed. 
One  day,  when  on  the  top  of  a  tall  building,  part  of  which  we 
were  throwing  down  to  supply  us  with  materials  for  our  work, 
I  raised  up  a  broad  slab  of  red  micaceous  sandstone,  thin  as  a 
roofing  slate,  and  exceedingly  fragile,  and,  holding  it  out  at 
arm's  length,  dropped  it  over  the  wall.  I  had  been  worse 
than  usual  all  that  morning,  and  much  depressed ;  and,  ere 
the  slab  parted  from  my  hand,  I  said, — looking  forward  to  but 
a  few  months  of  life, — I  shall  break  up  like  that  sandstone 
slab,  and  perish  as  little  known.  But  the  sandstone  slab  did 
not  break  up ;  a  sudden  breeze  blew  it  aslant  as  it  fell  ;  it 
cleared  the  rough  heap  of  stones  below,  where  I  had  antici- 
pated it  would  have  been  shivered  to  fragments ;  and,  light- 
ing on  its  edge,  stuck  upright  like  a  miniature  obelisk,  in  the 
soft  green  sward  beyond.  None  of  the  Philosophies  or  the 
Logics  would  have  sanctioned  the  inference  which  I  immedi- 
ately drew ;  but  that  curious  chapter  in  the  history  of  human 
belief  which  treats  of  signs  and  omens  abounds  in  such  postu- 
lates and  such  conclusions.  I  at  once  inferred  that  recovery 
awaited  me  ;  I  was  "  to  live  and  not  die  ;"  and  felt  lighter, 
during  the  few  weeks  I  afterwards  toiled  at  this  place,  under 
the  cheering  influence  of  the  conviction. 

The  tenant  of  the  farm  on  which  our  work  was  situated,  and 
who  had  been  both  a  great  distiller  and  considerable  farmer  in 
his  day,  had  become  bankrupt  shortly  before,  and  was  on  the 
eve  of  quitting  the  place,  a  broken  man.    And  his  forlorn  cir- 


228 

cum  stances  seemed  stamped  on  almost  every  field  and  i/dt- 
house  of  his  farm.  The  stone  fences  were  ruinous  ;  the  hedges 
gapped  by  the  almost  untended  cattle ;  a  considerable  sprink- 
ling of  corn-ears  lay  rotting  on  the  lea;  and  here  and  there  an 
entire  sheaf,  that  had  fallen  from  the  "  leading-cart"  at  the 
close  of  harvest,  might  be  seen  still  lying  among  the  stubble, 
fastened  to  the  earth  by  the  germination  of  its  grains.  Some 
of  the  outhouses  were  miserable  beyond  description.  There 
was  a  square  of  modern  offices,  in  which  the  cattle  and  horses 
of  the  farm — appropriated  by  the  landlord,  at  the  time,  under 
the  law  of  hypothec — were  tolerably  well  lodged ;  but  the 
hovel  in  which  three  of  the  farm-servants  lived,  and  in  which, 
for  want  of  a  better,  my  master  and  I  had  to  cook  and  sleep, 
was  one  of  the  most  miserable  tumble-down  erections  I  ever 
saw  inhabited.  It  had  formed  part  of  an  ancient  set  of  offices 
that  had  been  condemned  about  fourteen  years  before ;  but  the 
proprietor  of  the  place  becoming  insolvent,  it  had  been  spared, 
in  lack  of  a  better,  to  accommodate  the  servants  who  wrought 
on  the  farm  ;  and  it  had  now  become  not  only  a  comfortless, 
but  also  a  very  unsafe  dwelling.  It  would  have  formed  no 
bad  subject,  with  its  bulging  walls  and  gapped  roof,  that 
showed  the  bare  ribs  through  the  breaches,  for  the  pencil  of 
my  friend  William  Ross  ;  but  the  cow  or  horse  that  had  no 
better  shelter  than  that  which  it  afforded,  could  not  be  re- 
garded as  other  than  indifferently  lodged.  Every  heaviei 
shower  found  its  way  through  the  roof  in  torrents  :  I  could 
even  tell  the  hour  of  the  night  by  the  stars  which  passed  over 
the  long  opening  that  ran  along  the  ridge  from  gable  to  gable ; 
and  in  stormy  evenings  I  have  paused  at  every  ruder  blast,  in 
the  expectation  of  hearing  the  rafters  crack  and  give  wray  over 
my  head.  The  distiller  had  introduced  upon  his  farm,  on  a 
small  scale,  what  has  since  been  extensively  known  as  the 
bothy  system  ;  and  this  hovel  was  the  bothy.  There  were, 
as  I  have  said,  but  three  firm-servants  who  lived  in  it  at  the 
time, — young,  unmarried  lads,  extremely  ignorant,  and  of  gay, 
reckless  dispositions,  whose  care  for  their  master's  interests 
might  be  read  in  the  germinating  sheaves  that  lay  upon  his 


OK,   THE    STORY   OF  MY  EDUCATION.  229 

fields,  and  who  usually  sp  )ke  of  him,  when  out  of  his  hear- 
ing, as  "  the  old  sinner."  He  too  evidently  cared  nothing  for 
them,  and  they  detested  him ;  and  regarded  the  ruin  which 
had  overtaken  him,  and  which  their  own  recklessness  and  in- 
differeney  to  his  welfare  must  have  at  least  assisted  to  secure, 
with  open  satisfaction.  "  It  was  a'e  comfort  anyhow,"  they 
said,  "  that  the  blastit  old  sinner,  after  a'  his  near-goingness 
wi'  them,  was  now  but  a  dyvour  bankrupt."  Bad  enough, 
certainly  ;  and  yet  natural  enough,  and,  in  a  sense,  proper 
enough,  too.  The  Christian  divine  would  have  urged  these 
men  to  return  their  master  good  for  evil.  Cobbett,  on  the 
contrary,  would  have  advised  them  to  go  out  at  nights  a  rick- 
burning.  The  better  advice  will  to  a  certainty  not  be  taken 
by  ninety-nine  out  of  every  hundred  of  our  bothy-men  ;  for  it 
is  one  of  the  grand  evils  of  the  system,  that  it  removes  its 
victims  beyond  the  ennobling  influences  of  religion ;  and,  on 
the  other  hand,  at  least  this  much  may  be  said  for  the  worse 
counsel,  that  the  system  costs  the  country  every  year  the 
price  of  a  great  many  corn-ricks. 

The  three  lads  lived  chiefly  on  brose,  as  the  viand  at  all 
edible  into  which  their  oatmeal  could  be  most  readily  convert- 
ed ;  and  never  baked  or  made  for  themselves  a  dish  of  porridge 
or  gruel,  apparently  to  avoid  trouble,  and  that  they  might  be 
as  little  as  possible  in  the  bated  bothy.  I  always  lost  sight 
of  them  in  the  evening; ;  but  towards  midnight  their  talk 
frequently  awoke  me  as  they  were  going  to  bed ;  and  I  heard 
them  tell  of  incidents  that  had  befallen  them  at  the  neighboring 
farm-houses,  or  refer  to  blackguard  bits  of  scandal  which 
they  had  picked  up.  Sometimes  a  fourth  voice  mingled  in 
the  dialogue.  It  was  that  of  a  reckless  poacher,  who  used  to 
come  in,  always  long  after  nightfall,  and  fling  himself  down 
on  a  lair  of  straw  in  a  corner  of  the  bothy  ;  and  usually  ere 
day  broke  he  was  up  and  away.  The  grand  enjoyment  of  the 
three  farm-lads, — the  enjoyment  which  seemed  to  counter- 
balance, with  its  concentrated  delights,  the  comfortless  monot. 
ony  of  weeks, — was  a  rustic  ball,  which  took  place  once  every 
month,  and  sometimes  oftener,  at  a  public-house  in  a  nei^h. 


230 

boring  village,  and  at  which  they  used  to  meet  some  of  the 
farm-lasses  of  the  locality,  and  dance  and  drink  whisky  till 
morning.  I  know  not  how  their  money  stood  such  frequent 
carousals ;  but  they  were,  I  saw,  bare  of  every  necessary  ar- 
ticle of  clothing,  especially  of  underclothing  and  linen  ;  and  I 
learned  from  their  occasional  talk  about  justice-of-peace  sum- 
monses, that  the  previous  term-day  had  left  in  the  hands  of 
their  shoemakers  and  drapers  unsettled  bills.  But  such  mat- 
ters  were  taken  very  lightly  :  the  three  lads,  if  not  happy,  were 
at  least  merry  ;  and  the  monthly  ball,  for  which  they  sacri- 
ficed so  much,  furnished  not  only  its  hours  of  pleasure  while 
it  lasted,  but  also  a  week's  talking  in  anticipation  ere  it  came, 
and  another  week's  talking  over  its  various  incidents  after  it 
had  passed.  And  such  was  my  experience  of  the  bothy  sys- 
tem in  its  first  beginnings.  It  has  since  so  greatly  increased, 
that  there  are  now  single  counties  in  Scotland  in  which  there 
are  from  five  to  eight  hundred  farm-servants  exposed  to  its 
deteriorating  influences  ;  and  the  rustic  population  bids  fair  in 
those  districts  fully  to  rival  that  of  our  large  towns  in  profli- 
gacy, and  greatly  to  outrival  them  in  coarseness.  Were  I 
a  statesman  I  would,  I  think,  be  bold  enough  to  try  the  efficacy 
of  a  tax  on  bothies.  It  is  long  since  Goldsmith  wrote  regard- 
ing a  state  of  society  in  which  "  wealth  accumulates  and  men 
decay,"  and  since  Burns  looked  with  his  accustomed  sagacity 
on  that  change  for  the  worse  in  the  character  of  our  rural 
people  which  the  large  farm-system  has  introduced.  "  A  fertile 
improved  country  is  West  Lothian,"  we  find  the  latter  poet 
remarking,  in  one  of  his  journals  :  "  but  the  more  elegance 
and  luxury  among  the  farmers  I  always  observe  in  equal  pro- 
portion the  rudeness  and  stupidity  of  the  peasantry.  This 
remark  I  have  made  all  over  the  Lothians,  Merse,  Roxburgh, 
&c ;  and  for  this,  among  other  reasons,  I  think  that  a  man  of 
omantic  taste — 'a  man  of  feeling' — will  be  better  pleased  with 
the  poverty  but  intelligent  minds  of  the  peasantry  of  Ayrshire 
(peasantry  they  all  are  below  the  Justice  of  Peace),  than  the 
opulence  of  a  club  of  Merse  farmers,  when  he  at  the  same  time 
considers  the  Vandalism  of  their  plough-folks."     The  dete- 


OR,   THE  STORY   OF   MY  EDUCATION.  231 

riorating  effect  of  the  large-farm  system,  remarked  by  the  poet, 
is  inevitable.  It  is  impossible  that  the  modern  farm-servant, 
in  his  comparatively  irresponsible  situation,  and  with  his  fixed 
wages  of  meagre  amount,  can  be  rendered  as  thoughtful  and 
provident  a  person  as  the  small  farmer  of  the  last  age,  who, 
thrown  on  his  own  resources,  had  to  cultivate  his  fields  and 
drive  his  bargains  with  his  Martinmas  and  Whitsunday  settle- 
ment with  the  landlord  full  before  him ;  and  who  often  suc- 
ceeded in  saving  money  and  in  giving  a  classical  education  to 
some  promising  son  or  nephew,  which  enabled  the  young  man 
to  rise  to  a  higher  sphere  of  life.  Farm-servants,  as  a  class, 
must  be  lower  in  the  scale  than  the  old  tenant-farmers,  who 
wrought  their  little  farms  with  their  own  hands  ;  but  it  is  pos- 
sible to  elevate  them  far  above  the  degraded  level  of  a  bothy  ; 
and  unless  means  be  taken  to  check  the  spread  of  the  ruinous 
process  of  brute-making  which  the  system  involves,  the  Scottish 
people  will  sink,  to  a  certainty,  in  the  agricultural  districts,  from 
being  one  of  the  most  provident,  intelligent  and  moral  in 
Europe,  to  be  one  of  the  most  licentious,  reckless  and  ignorant. 
Candle-light  is  a  luxury  in  which  no  one  ever  thinks  of  in- 
dulging in  a  barrack ;  and  in  a  barrack  such  as  ours  at  this 
time,  riddled  with  gaps  and  breaches,  and  filled  with  all  man- 
ner of  cold  .draughts,  it  was  not  every  night  in  which  a  candle 
would  have  burnt.  And  as  our  fuel,  which  consisted  of  sorely 
decayed  wood, — the  roofing  of  a  dilapidated  outhouse  which 
we  were  pulling  down, — formed  but  a  dull  fire,  it  was  with 
difficulty  I  could  read  by  its  light.  By  spreading  out  my 
book,  however,  within  a  foot  or  so  of  the  embers,  I  was  en- 
abled, though  sometimes  at  the  expense  of  a  headache,  to  pros- 
ecute a  new  tract  of  reading  which  had  just  opened  to  me, 
and  in  which,  for  a  time,  I  found  much  amusement.  There 
was  a  vagabond  pedlar  who  travelled  at  this  time  the  northern 
counties,  widely  known  as  Jack  from  Dover,  but  whose  true 
name  was  Alexander  Knox,  and  who  used  to  affirm  that  he 
was  of  the  same  family  as  the  great  Reformer.  The  pedlar 
himself  was,  however,  no  reformer.  Once  every  six  weeks  or 
two  months,  he  go   madly  drunk  and  not  only  "  perished  the 


232 

pack,"  as  he  used  to  say,  but  sometimes  got  into  prison  to  boot. 
There  were,  however,  some  kind  relations  in  the  south,  who 
always  set  him  up  again ;  and  Jack  from  Dover,  after  a  fort- 
night of  misery,  used  to  appear  with  the  ordinary  bulk  of 
merchandize  at  his  back,  and  continue  thriving  until  he  again 
got  drunk.  He  had  a  turn  for  buying  and  reading  curious 
books,  which,  after  mastering  their  contents,  he  always  sold 
again ;  and  he  learned  to  bring  them,  when  of  a  kind  which  no 
one  else  would  purchase,  to  my  mother,  and  recommend  them 
as  suitable  for  me.  Poor  Jack  was  always  conscientious  in  his 
recommendations.  I  know  not  how  he  contrived  to  take  the 
exact  measure  of  my  tastes  in  the  matter,  but  suitable  for  me 
they  invariably  were  ;  and  as  his  price  rarely  exceeded  a  shil- 
ling per  volume,  and  sometimes  fell  below  a  sixpence,  my 
mother  always  purchased,  when  she  could,  upon  his  judgment. 
I  owed  to  his  discrimination  my  first  copy  of  "  Bacon's  Wis- 
dom of  the  Ancients,"  "  done  into  English  by  Sir  Arthur 
Gorges,"  and  a  book  to  which  I  had  long  after  occasion  to 
refer  in  my  geological  writings, — Maillet's  "  Telliamed," — ■ 
one  of  the  earlier  treatises  on  the  development  hypothesis ;  and 
he  had  now  procured  for  me  a  selection,  in  one  volume,  of  the 
Poems  of  Gawin  Douglas  and  Will  Dunbar,  and  another  col- 
lection in  a  larger  volume,  of  "  Ancient  Scottish  Poems,"  from 
the  MS.  of  George  Bannatyne.  I  had  been  previously  almost 
wholly  unacquainted  with  the  elder  Scottish  poets.  My  Uncle 
James  had  introduced  me,  at  a  very  early  age,  to  Burns  and 
Ramsay,  and  I  had  found  out  Fergusson  and  Tannahill  for 
myself;  but  that  school  of  Scottish  literature  which  flourished 
between  the  reigns  of  David  the  Second  and  James  the  Sixth 
had  remained  to  me,  until  now,  well-nigh  a  terra  incognita  ; 
and  I  found  no  little  pleasure  in  exploring  the  antique  recesses 
which  it  opened  up.  Shortly  after,  I  read  Ramsay's  "  Ever- 
green," the  "  King's  Quair,"  and  the  true  "  Actes  and  Deidis 
of  ye  illuster  and  vailyeand  campioun  Shyr  Wilham  Wallace," 
not  modernized,  as  in  my -first  copy,  but  in  the  tongue  in  which 
they  had  been  recited  of  old  by  Henry  the  Minstrel :  I  had 
previously  gloated  o*  er  Barbour's  Bruce ;  and  thus  my  ae- 


OR,   THE   STORY   OF   MY    EDUCATION.  2r*3 


quaintance  with  the  old  Scots  poets,  if  not  very  profound,  be 
came  at  least  so  respectable,  that  not  until  many  years  after 
did  I  meet  with  an  individual  who  knew  them  equally  well. 
The  strange  picturesque  allegories  of  Douglas,  and  the  terse 
sense  and  racy  humor  of  Dunbar,  delighted  me  much.  As  I 
had  to  con  my  way  slowly  amid  the  difficulties  of  a  language 
which  was  no  longer  that  spoken  by  my  country  folk,  I  felt  as 
if  I  were  creating  the  sense  which  I  found :  it  came  gradually 
out  like  some  fossil  of  the  rock,  from  which  I  had  laboriously 
to  chip  away  the  enveloping  matrix;  and  in  hanging  admir- 
ingly over  it,  I  thought  I  perceived  how  it  was  that  some  of 
my  old  schoolfellows,  who  were  prosecuting  their  education  at 
college,  were  always  insisting  on  the  great  superiority  of  the  old 
Greek  and  Roman  writers  over  the  writers  of  our  own  coun- 
try. I  could  not  give  them  credit  for  much  critical  discern- 
ment :  they  were  indifferent  enough,  some  of  them,  to  both 
verse  and  prose,  and  hardly  knew  in  what  poetry  consisted ; 
and  yet  I  believed  them  to  be  true  to  their  perceptions  when 
they  insisted  on  what  they  termed  the  high  excellence  of  the 
ancients.  With  my  old  schoolfellows,  I  now  said,  the  process 
of  perusal,  when  reading  an  English  work  of  classical  standing, 
is  so  sudden,  compared  with  the  slowness  with  which  they 
imagine  or  understand,  that  they  slide  over  the  surface  of  their 
author's  numbers,  or  of  his  periods,  without  acquiring  a  due 
sense  of  what  lies  beneath ;  whereas,  in  perusing  the  works  of 
a  Greek  or  Latin  author,  they  have  just  to  do  what  I  am  doing 
in  deciphering  the  "  Palice  of  Honour,"  or  the  "  Goldin  Terge," 
— they  have  to  proceed  slowly,  and  to  render  the  language  of 
their  author  into  the  language  of  their  own  thinking.  And  so, 
losing  scarce  any  of  his  meaning  in  consequence,  and  not  re- 
flecting on  the  process  through  which  they  have  entered  into  it, 
they  contrast  the  little  which  they  gain  from  a  hurried  peru- 
sal of  a  good  English  book,  with  the  much  which  they  gain 
from  the  very  leisurely  perusal  of  a  good  Latin  or  Greek  one ; 
and  term  the  little  the  poverty  of  modern  writers,  and  the  much 
the  fertility  of  the  ancients.  Such  was  my  theory,  and  it  was 
at  least  not  an  uncharitable  one  to  my  acquaintance.     I  was. 


234  MY  SCHOOLS  AND    SCHOOLMASTERS; 

however,  arrested  in  the  middle  of  my  studies  by  a  day  of 
soaking  rain,  which  so  saturated  with  moisture  the  decayed 
spongy  wood,  our  fuel,  that,  though  I  succeeded  in  making  with 
some  difficulty  such  fires  of  it  as  sufficed  to  cook  our  victuals, 
it  defied  my  skill  to  make  one  by  which  I  could  read.  At 
length,  however,  this  dreary  season  of  labor — by  far  the 
gloomiest  I  ever  spent — came  to  a  close,  and  I  returned  with 
my  master  to  Cromarty  about  Martinmas, — our  heavy  job  of 
wcrk  completed,  and  my  term  of  apprenticeship  at  a  close. 


OB.    THE   STORY    OF   MY    EDUCATION.  286 


CHAPTEE    XII. 

**  Far  let  me  wander  down  thy  craggy  shore, 
With  rocks  and  trees  bestrewn,  dark  Loch  Maree." 

Small. 

The  restorative  powers  of  a  constitution  which  at  this  time 
it  took  much  hard  usage  to  injure,  came  vigorously  into  opera- 
tion on  my  removal  from  the  wet  ditch  and  the  ruinous  hovel ; 
and  ere  the  close  of  winter  I  had  got  once  more  into  my  ordi- 
nary state  of  robust  health.  I  read,  wrote,  drew,  correspond- 
ed with  my  friend  William  Ross  (who  had  removed  to  Edin- 
burgh), re-examined  the  Eathie  Lias,  and  re -explored  the 
Eathie  Burn, — a  noble  Old  Red  Sandstone  ravine,  remarkable 
for  the  wild  picturesqueness  of  its  cliffs  and  the  beauty  of  its 
cataracts.  I  spent,  too,  many  an  evening  in  Uncle  James's 
workshop,  on  better  terms  with  both  my  uncles  than  almost 
ever  before, — a  consequence,  in  part,  of  the  sober  complexion 
which,  as  the  seasons  passed,  my  mind  was  gradually  assum- 
ing, and,  in  part,  of  the  manner  in  which  I  had  completed  my 
engagement  with  my  master.  "Act  always,"  said  Uncle 
James,  t;  as  you  have  done  in  this  matter.  In  all  your  deal- 
ings, give  your  neighbor  the  cast  of  the  bank, — 'good  meas- 
ure heaped  up  and  running  over,' — and  you  will  not  lose  by 
it  in  the  end."  I  certainly  did  not  lose  by  faithfully  serving 
out  my  term  of  apprenticeship.  It  is  not  uninstructive  to  ob- 
serve how  strangely  the  public  are  led  at  times  to  attach  para 


23(5  MY  SCHOOLS  AND   SCHOOLMASTERS  : 

mount  importance  to  what  is  in  reality  only  subordinate^  im- 
portant, and  to  pass  over  the  really  paramount  without  thought 
or  notice.  The  destiny  in  life  of  the  skilled  mechanic  is  much 
more  influenced,  for  in>tance,  by  his  second  education — that 
of  his  apprenticeship — than  by  his  first — that  of  the  school ; 
and  yet  it  is  to  the  education  at  the  school  that  the  importance 
is  generally  regarded  as  attaching,  and  we  never  hear  of  the 
other.  The  careless,  incompetent  scholar  has  many  opportu 
nities  of  recovering  himself;  the  careless,  incompetent  appren- 
tice, who  either  fails  to  serve  out  his  regular  time,  or  who, 
though  he  fulfils  his  term,  is  discharged  an  inferior  workman, 
has  very  few  ;  and  farther,  nothing  can  be  more  certain  than 
that  inferiority  as  a  workman  bears  much  more  disastrously 
on  the  condition  of  the  mechanic  than  inferiority  as  a  scholar. 
Unable  to  maintain  his  place  among  brother  journeymen,  or 
to  render  himself  worthy  of  the  average  wages  of  his  craft,  the 
ill-taught  mechanic  falls  out  of  regular  employment,  subsists 
precariously  for  a  time  on  occasional  jobs,  and  either,  forming 
idle  habits,  becomes  a  vagabond  tramper,  or,  getting  into  the 
toils  of  some  rapacious  task -master,  becomes  an  enslaved 
sweater.  For  one  workman  injured  by  neglect  of  his  school- 
education,  there  are  scores  ruined  by  neglect  of  their  appren- 
ticeship-education. Three-fourths  of  the  distress  of  the  coun- 
try's mechanics  (of  course  not  reckoning  that  of  the  unhappy 
class  who  have  to  compete  with  machinery),  and  nine-tenths 
of  their  vagabondism,  will  be  found  restricted  to  inferior  work- 
men, who,  like  Hogarth's  "  careless  apprentice,"  neglected  the 
opportunities  of  their  second  term  of  education.  The  sagacious 
painter  had  a  truer  insight  into  the  matter  than  most  of  our 
modern  educationists. 

My  friend  of  the  Doocot  Cave  had  been  serving  a  short  ap- 
prenticeship to  a  grocer  in  London  during  the  latter  years  in 
which  I  had  been  working  out  mine  as  a  stone-mason  in  the 
north  country  ;  and  I  now  learned  that  he  had  just  returned 
to  his  native  place,  with  the  intention  of  setting  up  in  busi- 
ness for  himself.  To  those  who  move  in  the  upper  walks,  the 
superi  ;.rity  in  status  of  the  village  shop-keeper  over  the  jour- 


OK,    THE   STORY   OF   MY   EDUCATION.  237 

neyman  mason  may  not  be  very  perceptible  ;  but,  surveyed 
from  the  lower  levels  of  society,  it  is  quite  considerable  enough 
to  be  seen  ;  even  Gulliver  could  determine  that  the  Emperor 
of  Lilliputwas  taller  by  almost  the  breadth  of  a  nail  than  any 
of  his  Court;  and,  though  extremely  desirous  of  renewing  my 
acquaintanceship  with  my  old  friend,  I  was  sensible  enough  of 
his  advantage  over  me  in  point  of  position,  to  feel  that  the  ne- 
cessary advances  should  be  made  on  his  part,  not  on  mine.  I, 
however,  threw  myself  in  his  way,  though  after  a  manner  so 
fastidiously  proud  and  jealous,  that  even  yet,  every  time  the 
recollection  crosses  me,  it  provokes  me  to  a  smile.  On  learn- 
ing that  he  was  engaged  at  the  quay  in  superintending  the 
landing  of  some  goods,  for,  I  suppose,  his  future  shop,  I  assum- 
ed the  leathern  apron,  which  I  had  thrown  aside  for  the  winter 
at  Martinmas,  and  stalked  past  him  in  my  working  dress, — a 
veritable  operative  mason, — eyeing  him  steadfastly  as  I  passed. 
He  looked  at  me  for  a  moment;  and  then,  without  sign  of  re- 
cognition, turned  indifferently  away.  I  failed  taking  into  ac- 
count that  he  had  never  seen  me  girt  with  a  leathern  apron  be- 
fore,— that,  since  we  had  last  parted,  I  had  grown  more  than 
half  a  foot, — and  that  a  young  man  of  nearly  five  feet  eleven 
inches,  with  an  incipient  whisker  palpably  visible  on  his  check, 
might  be  a  different-looking  sort  of  person  from  a  smooth- 
chinned  strippling  of  little  more  than  five  feet  three.  And 
certainly  my  friend,  as  I  learned  from  him  nearly  three  years 
after,  failed  on  this  occasion  to  recognize  me.  But  believing 
that  he  did,  and  that  he  did  not  choose  to  reckon  among  his 
friends  a  humble  working  man,  I  returned  to  my  home  very 
sad,  and,  I  am  afraid,  not  a  little  angry  ;  and,  locking  up  the 
supposed  slight  in  my  breast,  as  if  of  too  delicate  a  nature  to 
be  communicated  to  any  one,  for  more  than  two  years  from 
this  time  I  did  not  again  cross  his  path. 

I  was  now  my  own  master,  and  commenced  work  as  a  jour- 
neyman in  behalf  of  one  of  my  maternal  aunts, — the  aunt  who 
had  gone  so  many  years  before  to  live  with  her  aged  relative, 
the  cousin  of  my  father,  and  the  mother  of  his  first  wife. 
Aunt  Jerny  had  resided  for  many  years  after  this  time  with 


238  MY  SCHOOLS  AND  SCHOOLMASTERS; 

an  aged  widow  lady,  who  had  lived  apart  in  quiet  gentility  on 
very  small  means ;  and,  now  that  she  was  dead,  my  aunt  saw 
her  vocation  gone,  and  wished  that  she  too  could  live  apart,  a 
life  of  humble  independency,  supporting  herself  by  her  spin- 
ning-wheel, and  by  now  and  then  knitting  a  stocking.     She 
feared,  however,  to  encounter  the  formidable  drain  on  her 
means  of  a  half-yearly  room-rent ;  and,  as  there  was  a  little 
bit  of  ground  at  the  head  of  the  strip  of  garden  left  me  by  my 
father,  which  bordered  on  a  road  that,  communicating  between 
town  and  country,  bore,  as  is  common  in  the  north  of  Scotland, 
the  French  name  of  the  Pays,  it  occurred  to  me  that  I  might 
try  my  hand,  as  a  skilled  mechanic,  in  erecting  upon  it  a  cot- 
tage for  Aunt  Jenny.     Masons  have,  of  course,  more  in  their 
power  in  the  way  of  house-building  than  any  other  class  of 
mechanics.     It  was  necessary,  however,  that  there  should  be 
money  provided  for  the  purchase  of  wood  for  the  roof,  and  for 
the  carting  of  the  necessary  stones  and  mortar ;  and  I  had  none. 
But  Aunt  Jenny  had  saved  a  few  pounds,  and  a  very  few 
proved  sufficient ;  and  so  I  built  a  cottage  in  the  Pays,  of  a 
single  room  and  a  closet,  as  my  first  job,  which,  if  not  very 
elegant,  or  of  large  accommodation,  came  fully  up  to  Aunt 
Jenny's  ideas  of  comfort,  and  which,  for  at  least  a  quarter  of 
a  century,  has  served  her  as  a  home.    It  was  completed  before 
Whitsunday,  and  I  then  deliberated  on  setting  myself  to  seek 
after  employment  of  a  more  remunerative  kind,  with  just  a 
little  of  the  feeling  to  which  we  owe  one  of  the  best  known 
elegiac  poems  in  the  language,  —  the  "Man  was  made  to 
Mourn"  of  Burns.     "  There  is  nothing  that  gives  me  a  more 
mortifying  picture  of  human  life,"  said  the  poet,  "  than  a  man 
seeking  work."     The  required  work,  however,  came  direct  in 
my  way  without  solicitation,  and  exactly  at  the  proper  time. 
I  was  engaged  to  assist  in  hewing  a  Gothic  gateway  among 
the  woods  of  my  old  haunt,  Conon-side ;  and  was  then  de- 
spatched, when  the  work  was  on  the  eve  of  being  finished,  to 
provide  materials  for  building  a  house  on  the  western  coast 
of  Ross-shire.    My  new  master  had  found  me  engaged  in  the 
previous  season,  amid  the  wild  turmoil  of  the  barrack,  in 


OK,    THE    STOEif   OF   MY   EDUCATION".  239 

studying  practical  geometry,  and  had  glanced  approvingly  over 
a  series  of  architectural  drawings,  which  I  had  just  complet- 
ed ;  and  he  now  sought  me  out  in  consequence,  and  placed 
me  it  charge  of  a  small  party  which  he  despatched  in  advance 
of  his  other  workmen,  and  which  I  was  instructed  to  increase, 
by  empl  \yTing  a  laborer  or  two  on  arriving  at  the  scene  of  our 
future  employment. 

We  were  to  be  accompanied  by  a  carter  from  a  neighbor- 
ing  town  ;  and  on  the  morning  fixed  for  the  commencemen 
of  our  journey,  his  cart  and  horse  were  early  at  Conon-side 
to  carry  across  the  country  the  tools  required  at  our  new  job ; 
but  of  himself  we  saw  no  trace,  and  about  ten  o'clock  we  set 
off  without  him.  Ascertaining,  however,  when  about  two 
miles  on  our  way,  that  we  had  left  behind  us  a  lever  useful  in 
the  setting  of  large  stones,  I  bade  my  companion  wait  for  me 
at  the  village  of  Contin,  where  we  expected  meeting  the  carter ; 
and,  returning  for  the  tool,  I  quitted  the  high  road  on  finding 
it,  and,  to  save  time,  and  avoid  a  detour  of  about  three  miles, 
struck  across  the  country  direct  on  the  village.  My  way  was, 
however,  a  very  rough  one ;  and  in  coming  upon  the  Conon, 
which  it  was  necessary  I  should  ford, — for,  by  avoiding  the 
detour,  I  had  missed  the  bridge, — I  found  it  tolerably  heavy 
in  flood.  Save  for  the  iron  lever  which  I  carried,  I  would 
have  selected,  as  my  point  of  crossing,  one  of  the  still,  deep 
pools,  as  much  safer  to  a  vigorous  swimmer  than  any  of  the 
apparent  fords,  with  their  powerful  currents,  whirling  eddies, 
and  rough  bottoms.  But  though  the  heroes  of  antiquity — 
men  such  as  Julius  Caesar  and  Horatius  Coccles — could  swim 
across  rivers  and  seas  in  heavy  armor,  the  specific  gravity  of 
the  human  subject  in  these  latter  ages  of  the  world  forbids 
such  feats  ;  and  concluding  that  I  had  net  levity  enough  in  my 
framework  to  float  across  the  lever,  I  selected,  with  some  hes- 
itation, one  of  the  better-looking  fords,  and,  with  my  trous- 
ers dangling  from  the  iron-beam  on  my  shoulder,  entered  the 
river.  Such  was  the  arrowy  swiftness  of  the  cm  rent,  how- 
ever, that  the  water  had  scarce  reached  my  middle  when  it 
began  to  hollow  out  the  stones  and  gravel  from  under  my  feet, 


240 

and  to  bear  me  down  per  force  in  a  slanting  direction,  There 
was  a  foaming  rapid  just  at  hand  ;  and  immediately  beyond, 
a  deep,  dark  pool,  in  which  the  chafed  current  whirled  around, 
as  if  exhausting  the  wrath  aroused  by  its  recent  treatment 
among  rocks  and  stones,  ere  recovering  its  ordinary  temper ; 
and  had  I  lost  footing,  or  been  carried  a  little  further  down,  I 
know  not  how  it  might  have  fared  with  me  in  the  wild  foam- 
ing descent  that  lay  between  the  ford  and  the  pool.  Curious- 
ly enough,  however,  the  one  idea  which,  in  the  excitement  of 
the  moment,  filled  my  mind,  was  an  intensely  ludicrous  one. 
I  would,  of  course,  lose  not  only  the  lever  in  the  torrent,  but 
my  trousers  also  ;  and  how  was  I  ever  to  get  home  without 
them  %  Where,  in  the  name  of  wonder,  would  I  get  a  kilt  to 
borrow  ?  I  have  oftener  than  once  experienced  this  strange 
sensation  of  the  ludicrous  in  circumstances  with  which  a  dif- 
ferent feeling  would  have  harmonized  better.  Byron  repre- 
sents it  as  rising  in  extreme  grief:  it  is,  however,  I  suspect, 
greatly  more  common  in  extreme  danger ;  and  all  the  in- 
stances which  the  poet  himself  gives  in  his  note, — Sir  Thomas 
More  on  the  scaffold,  Anne  Boleyn  in  the  Tower,  and  those 
victims  of  the  French  Revolution  "  with  whom  it  became  a 
fashion  to  leave  some  mot  as  a  legacy," — were  all  jokers 
rather  in  circumstances  of  desperate  and  hopeless  peril  than 
of  sorrow.  It  is,  however,  in  danger,  as  certainly  as  in  grief, 
a  joyless  sort  of  mirth. 

"Thai  playfulness  of  sorrow  ne'er  beguiles; 
It  smiles  in  bitterness  ;  but  still  it  smiles, 
And  sometimes  with  the  wisest  and  the  best, 
Till  even  the  scaffold  echoes  with  their  jest." 

The  feeling,  however,  though  an  inharmoniously  toned,  is  not 
a  weakening  one.  I  laughed  in  the  stream,  but  I  did  not  yield 
to  it ;  and,  making  a  violent  effort,  when  just  on  the  edge  of 
the  rapid,  I  got  into  stiller  water,  and  succeeded  in  making 
my  way  to  the  opposite  bank,  drenched  to  the  arm-pits.  It 
was  in  nearly  the  same  reach  of  the  Conon  that  my  poor 
friend  the  maniac  of  Ord  lost  her  life  a  few  years  after. 
I  found  my  companion  in  charge  of  the  cart  with  our  tools, 


OR.   THE  STORY  OF  MY  EDUCATION.  241 

baiting  at  an  inn  a  little  beyond  Contin ;  but  there  was  no 
sign  of  the  carter ;  and  we  were  informed  by  the  innkeeper, 
to  whom  he  was  well  known,  that  we  might  have  to  wait  for 
him  all  day  and  perhaps  not  see  him  at  night.  Click-Clack, — 
a  name  expressive  of  the  carter's  fluency  as  a  talker,  by  which 
he  was  oftener  designated  than  by  the  one  in  the  parish  register, 
— might  no  doubt  have  purposed  in  the  morning  joining  us  at 
an  early  h  jur,  but  that  was  when  he  was  sober ;  and  what  his 
intention  might  be  now,  said  the  innkeeper,  when  in  all  proba- 
bility he  was  drunk,  no  living  man  could  say.  This  was  rather 
startling  intelligence  to  men  who  had  a  long  journey  through 
a  rough  country  before  them  ;  and  my  comrade — a  lad  a  year 
or  two  older  than  myself,  but  still  an  apprentice — added  to  my 
dismay  by  telling  me  he  had  been  sure  from  the  first  there  was 
something  wrong  with  Click-Clack,  and  that  his  master  had 
secured  his  services,  not  from  choice,  but  simply  because,  hav- 
ing thoughtlessly  become  surety  for  him  at  a  sale  for  the  price 
of  a  horse,  and  being  left  to  pay  for  the  animal,  he  had  now  em- 
ployed him,  in  the  hope  of  getting  himself  reimbursed.  I  re- 
solved, however,  on  waiting  for  the  carter  until  the  last  moment 
after  which  it  would  be  impossible  for  us  to  reach  our  ultimate 
stage  without  perilously  encroaching  on  the  night ;  and,  taking 
it  for  granted  that  he  would  not  very  soon  join  us,  I  set  out  for 
a  neighboring  hill,  which  commands  an  extensive  view,  to  take 
note  of  the  main  features  of  a  district  with  which  I  had  formed, 
during  the  two  previous  years,  not  a  few  interesting  associa- 
tions, and  to  dry  my  wetted  clothes  in  the  breeze  and  the 
sun.  The  old  Tower  of  Fairburn  formed  one  of  the  most 
striking  objects  in  the  prospect ;  and  the  eye  expatiated  beyond 
from  where  the  gneiss  region  begins,  on  a  tract  of  broken  hill 
and  brown  moor,  uncheered  by  a  single  green  field  or  human 
dwelling.  There  are  traditions  that,  in  the:r  very  peculiarity, 
and  remoteness  from  the  tract  of  ordinary  invention,  give 
evidence  of  their  truth  ;  and  I  now  called  up  a  tradition,  which 
I  owed  to  my  friend  the  maniac,  respecting  the  manner  in 
wlr  ?h  the  Mackenzies  of  Fairburn  and  the  Chisholms  of  Strath- 


242 

glass  had  divided  this  barren  tract  between  them.  It  had  lain> 
from  the  first  settlement  of  the  country,  an  unappropriated 
waste,  and  neither  proprietor  could  tell  where  his  own  lands 
terminated,  or  those  of  his  neighbor  began ;  but  finding  that 
the  want  of  a  proper  line  of  demarcation  led  to  quarrels  be- 
tween their  herdsmen  when  baiting  in  their  summer  shi  slings 
with  their  cattle,  they  agreed  to  have  the  tract  divided.  The 
age  of  land-surveyors  had  not  yet  come ;  but,  selecting  two  old 
women  of  seventy-five,  they  sent  them  out  at  the  same  hour,  tc 
meet  among  the  hills,  the  one  from  Fairburn  Tower,  the  other 
from  Erchless  Castle,  after  first  binding  themselves  to  accept 
their  place  of  meeting  as  the  point  at  which  to  set  up  the  bound- 
ary-stone of  the  two  properties.  The  women,  attended  by  a 
bevy  of  competent  witnesses,  journeyed  as  if  for  life  and  death; 
but  the  Fairburn  woman,  who  was  the  laird's  foster-mother, 
either  more  zealous  or  more  active  than  the  Chisholm  one, 
travelled  nearly  two  miles  for  her  one ;  and  when  they  came 
in  sight  of  each  other  in  the  waste,  it  was  far  from  the  fields  of 
Fairburn,  and  comparatively  at  no  great  distance  from  those 
of  the  Chisholm.  It  is  not  easy  knowing  why  they  should 
have  regarded  one  another  in  the  light  of  enemies  ;  but  at  a 
mile's  distance,  their  flagging  pace  quickened  into  a  run,  and, 
meeting  at  a  narrow  rivulet,  they  would  fain  have  fought ; 
but  lacking,  in  their  utter  exhaustion,  strength  for  fighting 
and  breath  for  scolding,  they  could  only  seat  themselves  on 
the  opposite  banks,  and  girn  at  one  another  across  the  stream. 
George  Cruikshank  has  had  at  times  worse  subjects  for  his 
pencil.  I'  is,  I  believe,  Landor,  in  one  of  his  "  imaginary 
conversations,"  who  makes  a  Highland  laird  inform  Adam 
Smith  that,  desirous  to  ascertain,  in  some  sort  of  conceivable 
degree,  the  size  of  his  property,  he  had  placed  a  line  of  pipers 
around  it,  each  at  such  a  distance  from  his  nearest  neighbor 
that  he  could  barely  catch  the  sound  of  his  bag-pipe ;  and 
that  fron.  the  number  of  pipers  required  he  was  able  to  form 
an  approximate  estimate  of  the  extent  of  his  estate.  And 
here,  in  a  Highland  traditic  n,  genuine  at  least  as  such,  are  we 


243 

introduced  to  an  expedient  of  the  kind  scarce  less  ludicrous  or 
inadequate  than  that  which  Landor  must,  in  one  of  his  humor- 
our  moods,  have  merely  imagined. 

I  returned  to  the  inn  at  the  hour  from  which,  as  I  have  said, 
it  would  be  possible  for  us,  and  not  more  than  possible,  to 
complete  our  day's  journey  ;  and  finding,  as  I  had  anticipated, 
no  trace  of  Click-Clack,  we  set  off  without  him.  Our  way 
led  us  through  long  moory  straths,  with  here  and  there  a  blue 
lake  and  birch  wood,  and  here  and  there  a  group  of  dingy 
cottages  and  of  irregular  fields ;  but  the  general  scenery  was 
that  of  the  prevailing  schistose  gneiss  of  the  Scotch  Highlands, 
in  which  rounded  confluent  hills  stand  up  over  long  withdraw- 
ing valleys,  and  imposing  rather  from  its  bare  and  lonely 
expansiveness,  than  from  aught  bold  or  striking  in  its  features. 
The  district  had  been  opened  up  only  a  few  seasons  previous 
by  the  Parliamentary  road  over  which  we  travelled,  and  was 
at  the  time  little  known  to  the  tourist ;  and  the  thirty  years 
which  have  since  passed,  have  in  some  respects  considerably 
changed  it,  as  they  have  done  the  Highlands  generally.  Most 
of  the  cottages,  when  I  last  journeyed  the  way,  were  repre- 
sented by  but  broken  ruins,  and  the  fields  by  mossy  patches 
that  remained  green  amid  the  waste.  I  marked  at  one  spot 
an  extraordinary  group  of  oak  trees,  in  the  last  stage  of  decay, 
which  would  have  attracted  notice  from  their  great  bulk  and 
size  in  even  the  forests  of  England.  The  largest  of  the  group 
lay  rotting  upon  the  ground, — a  black,  doddered  shell,  fully 
six  feet  in  diameter,  but  hollow  as  a  tar-barrel ;  while  the  others, 
some  four  or  five  in  number,  stood  up  around  it,  totally  di- 
vested of  all  their  larger  boughs,  but  green  with  leaves,  that, 
from  the  minuteness  of  the  twigs  on  which  they  grew,  wrap- 
ped them  around  like  close-fitting  mantles.  Their  period  of 
"  tree-ship  " — to  borrow  a  phrase  from  Cowper — must  have 
extended  far  into  the  obscure  past  of  Highland  history, — to  a 
time,  I  doubt  not,  when  not  a  few  of  the  adjacent  peat-mosses 
still  lived  as  forests,  and  when  some  of  the  neighboring  clans 
» -Erasers,  Bissets,  and  Chisholms — had,  at  least  under  the  ex- 


244  MY  SCHOOLS  AND  SCHOOLMASTERS; 

isting  names  (French  and  Saxon  in  their  derivation),  not  yet 
begun  to  be.  Ere  we  reached  the  solitary  inn  of  Auchen- 
nasheen, — a  true  Highland  clachan  of  the  ancient  type, — the 
night  had  fallen  dark  and  stormy  for  a  night  in  June ;  and  a 
gray  mist  which  had  been  descending  for  hours  along  the  hills, 
— blotting  offtheir  brown  summits  bit  by  bit,  as  an  artist  might 
his  pencilled  hills  with  a  piece  of  India  rubber,  but  which, 
methodical  in  its  encroachments,  had  preserved  in  its  advances 
a  perfect  horizontality  of  line, — had  broken  into  a  heavy,  con- 
tinuous rain.  As,  however,  the  fair  weather  had  lasted  us  till 
we  were  within  a  mile  of  our  journey's  end,  we  were  only 
partially  wet-  on  our  arrival,  and  soon  succeeded  in  drying 
ourselves  in  front  of  a  noble  turf  fire.  My  comrade  would  fain 
have  solaced  himself,  after  our  weary  journey,  with  something 
nice.  He  held  that  a  Highland  inn  should  be  able  to  furnish 
at  least  a  bit  of  mutton-ham  or  a  cut  of  dried  salmon,  and 
ordered  a  few  slices,  first  of  ham,  and  then  of  salmon  ;  but  his 
orders  served  merely  to  perplex  the  landlord  and  his  wife,  whose 
stores  seemed  to  consist  of  only  oatmeal  and  whisky  ;  and, 
coming  down  in  his  expectations  and  demands,  and  intimating 
that  he  was  very  hungry,  and  that  anything  edible  would  do, 
we  heard  the  landlady  inform,  with  evident  satisfaction,  a  red- 
armed  wench,  dressed  in  blue  plaiding,  that  "  the  lads  would 
take  porridge."  The  porridge  was  accordingly  prepared  ;  and 
when  engaged  in  discussing  this  familiar  viand,  a  little  before 
midnight, — for  we  had  arrived  late, — a  tall  Highlander  enter- 
ed the  inn,  dropping  like  a  mill-wheel.  He  was  charged,  he 
said,  with  messages  to  the  landlord,  and  to  two  mason  lads  in 
Jie  inn,  from  a  forlorn  carter  with  whom  he  had  travelled 
about  twenty  miles,  but  who,  knocked  up  by  the  "  drap  drink" 
and  a  pair  of  bad  shoes,  had  been  compelled  to  shelter  for  the 
night  in  a  cottage  about  seven  miles  short  of  Auchen-nasheen. 
The  carter's  message  to  the  landlord  was  simply  to  the  effect 
that,  the  two  mason  lads  having  stolen  his  horse  and  cart,  he 
instructed  him  to  detain  his  property  for  him,  until  he  himself 
should  come  up  in  the  morning.     As  for  his  message  to  the 


245 

lads  said  the  Highlander,  "  it  was  no  meikle  worth  gaun  o'er 
again  ;  but  if  we  liked  to  buckle  on  a'  the  Gaelic  curses  to  a' 
the  English  ones,  it  would  be  something  like  that." 

We  were  awakened  next  morning  by  a  tremendous  hubbub 
in  the  adjoining  apartment.  It  is  Click-Clack,  the  carter,  said 
my  comrade :  O,  what  shall  we  do  1  We  leaped  up  ;  and 
getiing  into  our  clothes  in  doubly-quick  time,  set  ourselves  to 
reconnoitre  through  the  crannies  of  a  deal  partition,  and  saw  the 
carter  standing  in  the  middle  of  the  next  room,  storming  furi- 
ously, and  the  landlord,  a  smooth-spoken,  little  old  man,  striv- 
ing hard  to  conciliate  him.  Click-Clack  was  a  rough-looking 
fellow,  turned  of  forty,  of  about  five  feet  ten,  with  a  black,  un- 
shaven beard,  like  a  shoe-brush,  stuck  under  his  nose,  which 
was  red  as  a  coal,  and  attired  in  a  sadly-breached  suit  of  Aber- 
deen-gray, topped  by  a  brimless  hat,  that  had  been  borrowed, 
apparently,  from  some  obliging  scare-crow.  I  measured  him 
in  person  and  expression  ;  and,  deeming  myself  his  match, 
even  unassisted  by  my  comrade,  on  whose  discretion  I  could 
calculate  with  more  certainty  than  on  his  valor,  I  entered 
the  apartment,  and  taxed  him  with  gross  dereliction  of  duty. 
He  had  left  us  to  drive  his  horse  and  cart  for  a  whole  day,  and 
had  broken,  for  the  sake  of  his  wretched  indulgence  in  the  pub- 
lic-house, his  engagement  with  our  master ;  and  I  would  report 
him  to  a  certainty.  The  carter  turned  upon  me  with  the  fierce- 
ness of  a  wild  beast ;  but,  first  catching  his  eye,  as  I  would 
that  of  a  maniac,  I  set  my  face  very  near  his,  and  he  calmed 
down  in  a  moment.  He  could  not  help  being  late,  he  said  : 
he  had  reached  the  inn  at  Contin  not  an  hour  after  we  had  left 
it ;  and  it  was  really  very  hard  to  have  to  travel  a  long  day's 
journey  in  such  bad  shoes.  We  accepted  his  apology  ;  and, 
ordering  the  landlord  to  bring  in  half  a  mutchkin  of  whisky, 
the  storm  blew  by.  The  morning,  like  the  previous  night,  had 
been  thick  and  rainy  ;  but  it  gradually  cleared  up  as  the  day 
rose ;  and  after  breakfast  we  set  out  together  along  a  broken 
footpath,  never  before  traversed  by  horse  and  cart.  We  passed 
a  solitary  lake,  on  whose  shores  the  only  human  dwelling  was 
a  dark  turf  shieling,  at  which,  however,  Clrck-Clack  ascer- 


246  MY  SCHOOLS  AND  SCHOOLMASTERS; 

tained  there  was  -whisky  to  be  sold ;  and  then  entered  up  jn  a 
tract  of  scenery  wholly  different  in  its  composition  and  chai 
acter  from  that  through  which  our  journey  had  previously  lain. 
There  runs  along  the  west  coast  of  Scotland,  from  the  island 
of  Rum  to  the  immediate  neighborhood  of  Cape  Wrath,  a 
formation  laid  down  by  Macculloch,  in  his  Geological  Map  of 
the  Kingdom,  as  Old  Red  Sandstone,  but  which  underlies  for- 
mations deemed  primary, — two  of  these  of  quartz  rock,  and  a 
third  of  that  unfossiliferous  limestone  in  which  the  huge  Cave 
of  Smoo  is  hollowed,  and  to  which  the  Assynt  marbles  belong. 
The  system,  which,  taken  as  a  whole, — quartz-rock,  lime,  and 
sandstone, — corresponds  bed  for  bed  with  the  Lower  Old  Red 
of  the  east  coast,  and  is  probably  of  a  highly  mctamorphic  ex- 
ample of  that  great  deposit,  exhibits  its  fullest  development 
in  Assynt,  where  all  its  four  component  beds  are  present.  In 
the  tract  on  which  we  now  entered,  it  presents  only  two  of 
these, — the  lower  quartz-rock,  and  the  underlying  red  sand- 
stone ;  but  wherever  any  of  its  members  appear,  they  present 
unique  features, — marks  of  enormous  denudation,  and  a  bold 
style  of  landscape  altogether  its  own ;  and  in  now  entering 
upon  it  for  the  first  time,  I  was  much  impressed  by  its  extra- 
ordinary character.  Loch  Maree,  one  of  the  wildest  of  our 
Highland  lakes, — and  at  this  time  scarce  at  all  known  to  the 
tourist, — owes  to  it  all  that  is  peculiar  in  its  appearance, — its 
tall  pyramidal  quartz  mountains,  that  rise  at  one  stride,  steep, 
and  well  nigh  as  naked  as  the  old  Pyramids,  from  nearly  the 
level  of  the  sea,  to  heights  on  which  at  midsummer  the  snows 
of  winter  gleam  white  in  streaks  and  patches,  and  a  picturesque 
sandstone  tract  of  precipitous  hills,  which  flanks  its  western 
shore,  and  bore  at  this  period  the  remains  of  one  of  the  old 
pine  forests.  A  continuous  wall  of  gneiss  mountains,  that  runs 
along  the  eastern  side  of  the  lake,  sinks  sheer  into  its  brown 
depths,  save  at  one  point,  where  a  level  tract,  half-encircled 
by  precipices,  is  occupied  by  fields  and  copsewood,  and  bears 
in  the  midst  a  white  mansion-house ;  the  blue  expanse  of  the 
lake  greatly  broadens  in  its  lower  reaches ;  and  a  group  of  par- 
tially submerged  hillocks,  that  resemble  the  forest-covered  ones 


247 

on  its  western  shores,  but  are  of  lower  altitude,  rise  over  its 
waters,  and  form  a  miniature  archipelago,  gray  with  lichen ed 
stone,  and  bosky  with  birch  and  hazel.  Finding  at  the  head 
of  the  loch  that  no  horse  and  cart  had  ever  forced  their  way 
along  its  sides,  we  had  to  hire  a  boat  for  the  transport  of  at 
least  cart  and  baggage ;  and  when  the  boatmen  were  getting 
ready  for  the  voyage,  which  was,  with  the  characteristic  dila- 
toriness  of  the  district,  a  work  of  hours,  we  baited  at  the 
clachan  of  Kinlochewe, — a  humble  Highland  inn,  like  that  in 
which  we  had  passed  the  night.  The  name — that  of  an  old 
farm  which  stretches  out  along  the  head  or  upper  end  of  Loch 
Maree — has  a  remarkable  etymology :  it  means  simply  the 
head  of  Loch  Ewe, — the  salt-water  loch  into  which  the  waters 
of  Loch  Maree  empty  themselves  by  a  river  little  more  than 
a  mile  in  length,  and  whose  present  head  is  some  sixteen  or 
twenty  miles  distant  from  the  farm  which  bears  its  name.  Ere 
that  last  elevation  of  the  land,  however,  to  which  our  country 
owes  the  level  marginal  strip  that  stretches  between  the  pres- 
ent coast-line  and  the  ancient  one,  the  sea  must  have  found  its 
way  to  the  old  farm.  Loch  Maree  (Mary's  Loch),  a  name 
evidently  of  mediaeval  origin,  would  then  have  existed  as  a 
prolongation  of  the  marine  Loch  Ewe,  and  Kinlochewe  would 
have  actually  been  what  the  compound  words  signify, — the 
head  of  Loch  Ewe.  There  seems  to  be  reason  for  holding  that, 
ere  the  latest  elevation  of  the  land  took  place  in  our  island,  it 
had  received  its  first  human  inhabitants, — rude  savages,  who 
employed  tools  and  weapons  of  stone,  and  fashioned  canoes 
out  of  single  logs  of  wood.  Are  we  to  accept  etymologies 
such  as  the  instanced  one — and  there  are  several  such  in  the 
Highlands — as  good,  in  evidence  that  these  aboriginal  savages 
were  of  the  Celtic  race,  and  that  Gaelic  was  spoken  in  Scot- 
land at  a  time  when  its  strips  of  grassy  links,  and  the  sites 
of  many  of  its  seaport  towns,  such  as  Leith,  Greenock,  Mus- 
selburgh, and  Cromarty,  existed  as  oozy  sea-beaches,  covered 
twice  every  day  by  the  waters  of  the  ocean  1 

It  was  a  delightful  evening, — still,  breathless,  clear, — as  we 
6 wept  slowly  across  the  broad  breast  of  Loch  Maree ;  and  the 


248  MY  SCHOOLS  AND  SCHOOLMASTERS; 

red  light  of  the  sinking  sun  fell  on  many  a  sweet  wild  recesSj 
amid  the  labyri:  ith  of  islands  purple  with  heath,  and  overhung 
by  the  birch  and  mountain-ash  ;  or  slanted  along  the  broken 
glades  of  the  ancient  forest ;  or  lighted  up  into  a  blush  the 
pale  stony  faces  of  the  tall  pyramidal  hills.  A  boat  bearing 
a  wedding  party  was  crossing  the  lake  to  the  white  house  on 
the  opposite  side,  and  a  piper,  stationed  in  the  bows,  was  dis- 
coursing sweet  music,  that,  softened  by  distance,  and  caught 
up  by  the  echoes  of  the  rocks,  resembled  no  strain  I  had  ever 
heard  from  the  bagpipe  before.  Even  the  boatmen  rested  on 
their  oars,  and  I  had  just  enough  of  Gaelic  to  know  that  they 
were  remarking  how  very  beautiful  it  was.  "  I  wish,"  said 
my  comrade,  "  you  understood  those  men  :  they  have  a  great 
many  curious  stories  about  the  loch,  that  I  am  sure  you  would 
like.  See  you  that  large  island  %  It  is  Island-Maree.  There 
is,  they  tell  me,  an  old  burying-ground  on  it,  in  which  the 
Danes  used  to  bury  long  ages  ago,  and  whose  ancient  tomb- 
stones no  man  can  read.  And  yon  other  island  beside  it  is 
famous  as  the  place  in  which  the  good  people  meet  every  year 
to  make  submission  to  their  queen.  There  is,  they  say,  a  little 
loch  in  the  island,  and  another  little  island  in  the  loch ;  and 
it  is  under  a  tree  on  that  inner  island  that  the  queen  sits  and 
gathers  kain  for  the  Evil-One.  They  tell  me  that,  for  certain, 
the  fairies  have  not  left  this  part  of  the  country  yet."  We 
landed,  a  little  after  sunset,  at  the  point  from  which  our  road 
led  across  the  hills  to  the  sea-side,  but  found  that  the  carter 
had  not  yet  come  up  ;  and  at  length,  despairing  of  his  appear- 
ance, and  unable  to  carry  off  his  cart  and  the  baggage  with  us, 
as  we  had  succeeded  in  bringing  off  cart,  horse,  and  baggage 
on  the  previous  day,  we  were  preparing  to  take  up  our  night's 
lodging  under  the  shelter  of  an  overhanging  crag,  when  we 
heard  him  coming  soliloouizing  through  the  wood,  in  a  man 
ner  worthy  of  his  name,  as  if  he  were  not  one,  but  twenty  cart 
ers.  "  What  a  perfect  shame  of  a  country  !"  he  exclaimed,— 
"  perfect  shame  !  Road  for  a  horse,  forsooth  ! — more  like  a 
turnpike  stair.  And  not  a  feed  of  corn  for  the  poor  beast ; 
and  not  a  public  house  atween  this  and  Kinlochewe;  and  not 


m 

a  drop  of  whisky  ;  perfect,  perfect  shame  of  a  country  !"  On 
his  coming  up  in  apparently  very  bad  humor,  we  found  him 
disposed  to  transfer  the  shame  of  the  country  to  our  shoulders. 
What  sort  of  people  were  we,  he  asked,  to  travel  in  such  a 
land  without  whisky  !  Whisky,  however,  there  was  none  to 
produce ;  there  was  no  whisky  nearer,  we  told  him,  than  the 
public  house  at  the  sea-side,  where  we  proposed  spending  the 
night ;  and,  of  course,  the  sooner  we  got  there  the  better.  And 
after  assisting  hirr  to  harness  his  horse,  we  set  off  in  the  dark- 
ening twilight,  amid  the  hills.  Rough  gray  rocks,  and  little 
blue  lochans,  edged  with  flags,  and  mottled  in  their  season 
with  water-lilies,  glimmered  dim  and  uncertain  in  the  imper- 
fect light  as  we  passed;  but  ere  we  reached  the  inn  of  Flower- 
dale  in  Gairloch,  every  object  stood  out  clear,  though  cold,  in 
the  increscent  light  of  morning ;  and  a  few  light  streaks  of 
cloud,  poised  in  the  east  over  the  unrisen  sun,  were  gradually 
exchanging  their  gleam  of  pale  bronze  for  a  deep  flush  of 
mingled  blood  and  fire. 

After  the  refreshment  of  a  few  hours'  sleep  and  a  tolerable 
breakfast,  we  set  out  for  the  scene  of  our  labors,  which  lay  on 
the  sea-shore,  about  two  miles  further  to  the  north  and  west ; 
and  were  shown  an  outhouse, — one  of  a  square  of  dilapidated 
offices, — which  we  might  fit  up,  we  were  told,  for  our  barrack. 
The  building  had  been  originally  what  is  known  on  the  north- 
western coast  of  Scotland,  with  its  ever-weeping  climate,  as  a 
hay -barn  ;  but  it  was  now  merely  a  roof-covered  tank  of  green 
stagnant  water,  about  three-quarters  of  a  foot  in  depth,  which 
nad  oozed  through  the  walls  from  an  over-gorged  pond  in  the 
adjacent  court,  that  in  a  tract  of  recent  ruins  had  overflowed 
its  banks,  and  not  yet  subsided.  Our  new  house  did  look  ex- 
ceedingly like  a  beaver-dam,  with  this  disadvantageous  differ- 
ence, that  no  expedient  of  diving  could  bring  us  to  better 
■hambers  on  the  other  side  of  the  wall.  My  comrade,  setting 
nimself  to  sound  the  abyss  with  his  stick,  sung  out  in  sailor 
style,  "  three  feet  water  in  the  hold  ;"  Click-Clack  broke  into 
a  rage.  That  a  dwelling  for  human  creatures!"  he  said. 
"  If  I  was  to  put  my  horse  intil't,  poor  beast !  the  very  hoofs 


250  MY  SCHOOLS  AND  SCHOOLMASTERS; 

would  rot  off  him  in  less  than  a  week.     Are  we  eels  or  pad 
docks,  that  we  are  sent  to  live  in  a  loch?"   Marking,  however 
a  narrow  portion  of  the  ridge  which  dammed  up  the  waters 
of  the  neighboring  pool,  whence  our  domicile  derived  its  sup- 
ply, I  set  myself  to  cut  it  across,  and  had  soon  the  satisfaction 
of  seeing  the  general  surface  lowered  fully  a  foot,  and  the 
floor  of  our  future  dwelling  laid  bare.    Click-Clack,  gathering 
courage  as  he  saw  the  waters  ebbing  away,  seized  a  shovel, 
and  soon  showed  us  the  value  of  his  many  years'  practice  in 
the  labors  of  the  stable  ;  and  then,  despatching  him  for  a  few 
cart-loads  of  a  dry  shell-sand  from  the  shore,  which  I  had 
marked  by  the  way  as  suitable  for  mixing  with  our  lime,  we 
had  soon  for  our  tank  of  green  water  a  fine  white  floor.    "  Man 
wants  but  little  here  below,"  especially  in  a  mason's  barrack. 
There  were  two  square  openings  in  the  apartment,  neither  of 
them  furnished  with  frame  or  glass ;  but  the  one  we  filled 
up  with  stone,  and  an  old  unglazed  frame,  which,  with  the  as- 
sistance of  a  base  and  border  of  turf,  I  succeeded  in  fitting 
into  the  other,  gave  at  least  an  air  of  respectability  to  the 
place.      Boulder  stones,  capped  with  pieces  of  mossy  turf, 
served  us  for  seats ;  and  we  had  soon  a  comfortable  peat  fire 
blazing  against  the  gable ;  but  we  were  still  sadly  in  want  of 
a  bed  :  the  fundamental  damp  of  the  floor  was,  we  saw,  fast 
gaining  on  the  sand ;  and  it  would  be  neither  comfortable  nor 
safe  to  spread  our  dried  grass  and  blankets  over  it.    My  com- 
rade went  out  to  see  whether  the  place  did  not  furnish  mate- 
rials enough  of  any  kind  to  make  a  bedstead,  and  soon  return- 
ed in  triumph,  dragging  after  him  a  pair  of  harrows  which  he 
placed  side  by  side  in  a  snug  corner  beside  the  fire,  with  of 
course  the  teeth  downwards.     A  good  Catholic  prepared  to 
win  heaven  for  himself  by  a  judicious  use  of  sharp  points 
might  have  preferred  having  them  turned  the  other  way ;  but 
my  comrade  was  an  enlightened  Protestant ;  and  besides,  like 
Goldsmith's  sailor,  he  loved  to  lie  soft.     The  second  piece  of 
luck  was  mine.     I  found  lying  unclaimed  in  the  yard,  an  old 
barn-door,  which  a  recent  gale  had  blown  from  off  its  hinges ; 
and  by  placing  it  above  the  harrows,  and  driving  a  row  of 


251 

stakes  around  it  into  the  floor,  to  keep  the  outer  sleeper  from, 
rolling  off, — for  the  wall  served  to  secure  the  position  of  the 
inner  one, — we  succeeded  in  constructing,  by  our  joint  efforts, 
a  luxurious  bed.  There  was  but  one  serious  drawback  on  its 
comforts :  the  roof  overhead  was  bad,  and  there  was  an  obsti- 
nate drop  that  used,  during  every  shower  which  fell  in  the 
season  of  sleep,  to  make  a  dead  set  at  my  face,  and  try  me  at 
times  with  the  water-torture  of  the  old  story,  mayhap  half  a 
dozen  times  in  the  course  of  a  single  night. 

Our  barrack  fairly  fitted  up,  I  set  out  with  my  comrade, 
whose  knowledge  of  Gaelic  enabled  him  to  act  as  my  inter- 
preter, to  a  neighboring  group  of  cottages,  to  secure  a  laborer 
for  the  work  of  the  morrow.    The  evening  was  now  beginning 
to  darken ;  but  there  was  still  light  enough  to  show  me  that 
the  little  fields  I  passed  through  on  my  way  resembled  very 
much  those  of  Lilliput,  as  described  by  Gulliver.    They  were, 
however,  though  equally  small,  greatly  more  irregular,  and  had 
peculiarities,  too,  altogether  their  own.     The  land  had  orig- 
inally been  stony  ;  and  as  it  showed,  according  to  the  High- 
land phrase,  its  "  bare  bones  through  its  skin," — large  bosses 
of  the  rock  beneath  coming  here  and  there  to  the  surface, — 
the  Highlanders  had  gathered  the  stones  in  great  pyramidal 
heaps  on  the  bare  bosses ;  and  so  very  numerous  were  these  in 
some  of  the  fields,  that  they  looked  as  if  some  malignant  sor- 
cerer had,  in  the  time  of  harvest,  converted  all  their  shocks  into 
stone.     On  approaching  the  cottage  of  our  future  laborer,  I 
was  attracted  by  a  door  of  very  peculiar  construction  that  lay 
against  the  wall.     It  had  been  brought  from  the  ancient  pine 
forest  on  the  western  bank  of  Loch  Maree,  and  was  formed  of 
the  roots  of  trees  so  curiously  interlaced  by  nature,  that  when 
cut  out  of  the  soil,  which  it  had  covered  over  like  a  piece  of 
net-  work,  it  remained  firmly  together,  and  now  formed  a  door 
which  the  mere  imitator  of  the  rustic  might  in  vain  attempt  to 
rival.    We  entered  the  cottage,  and  plunging  downwards  two 
feet  or  so,  found  ourselves  upon  the  dunghill  ;>f  the  establish- 
ment, which  in  this  part  of  the  country  usually  occupied  at  the 
time  an  ante-chamber  which  corresponded  to  that  occupied  by 
12 


252 

the  cattle  a  few  years  earlier,  in  the  midland  districts  of  Suth 
erland.  Groping  in  this  foul  outer  chamber  through  a  stifling 
atmosphere  of  smoke,  we  came  to  an  inner  door  raised  to  the 
level  of  the  soil  outside,  through  which  a  red  umbery  gleam 
escaped  into  the  darkness ;  and,  climbing  into  the  inner  apart- 
ment, we  found  ourselves  in  the  presence  of  the  inmates  of 
the  mansion.  The  fire,  as  in  the  cottage  of  my  Sutherland- 
shire  relative,  was  placed  in  the  middle  of  the  floor ;  the  mas- 
;er  of  the  mansion,  a  red  haired,  strongly-built  Highlander, 
)f  the  middle  size  and  age,  with  his  son,  a  boy  of  twelve,  sat 
on  the  one  side ;  his  wife,  who,  though  not  much  turned  of 
thirty,  had  the  haggard,  drooping  cheeks,  hollow  eyes,  and 
pale,  sallow  complexion  of  old  age,  sat  on  the  other.  We 
broke  our  business  to  the  Highlander  through  my  companion, 
— for,  save  a  few  words  caught  up  at  school  by  the  boy,  there 
was  no  English  in  the  household, — and  found  them  disposed 
to  entertain  it  favorably.  A  large  pot  of  potatoes  hung  sus- 
pended over  the  fire,  under  a  dense  ceiling  of  smoke ;  and  he 
hospitably  invited  us  to  wait  supper,  which,  as  our  dinner  had 
consisted  of  but  a  piece  of  dry  oaten-cake,  we  willingly  did. 
As  the  conversation  went  on,  I  became  conscious  that  it  turn- 
ed upon  myself,  and  that  I  was  an  object  of  profound  commis- 
eration to  the  inmates  of  the  cottage.  "  What,"  I  inquired 
of  my  companion,  "  are  these  kind  people  pitying  me  so  very 
much  for  V  "  For  your  want  of  Gaelic,  to  be  sure.  How 
can  a  man  get  on  in  the  world  that  wants  Gaelic?"  "  But  do 
not  they  themselves,"  I  asked,  "  want  English  ?"  "  O  yes," 
he  said,  "  but  what  does  that  signify  ]  What  is  the  use  of 
English  in  Gairloch  V  The  potatoes,  with  a  little  ground 
salt,  and  much  unbroken  hunger  as  sauce,  ate  remarkably 
well.  Our  host  regretted  that  he  had  no  fish  to  offer  us ;  but 
a  tract  of  rough  weather  had  kept  him  from  sea,  and  he  had 
just  exhausted  his  previous  supply  ;  and  as  for  bread,  he  had 
used  up  the  last  of  his  grain  crop  a  little  after  Christmas,  and 
had  been  living,  with  his  family,  on  potatoes,  with  fish  when 
he  could  get  them,  ever  since. 

Thirty  years  have  now  passed  since  I  shared  in  the  High- 


OK,    TIIE   STORY    OF   MY   EDUCATION".  253 

lander's  evening  meal,  and  during  the  first  twenty  of  these, 
the  use  of  the  potatoe — unknown  in  the  Highlands  a  century 
before — greatly  increased.  I  have  been  told  by  my  maternal 
grandfather,  that  about  the  year  1740,  when  he  was  a  boy  of 
about  eight  or  nine  years  of  age,  the  head  gardener  at  Balna- 
govvn  Castle  used,  in  his  occasional  visits  to  Cromarty,  to  bring 
him  in  his  pocket,  as  great  rarities,  some  three  or  four  potatoes; 
and  that  it  was  not  until  some  fifteen  or  twenty  years  after 
this  time  that  he  saw  potatoes  reared  in  fields  in  any  part  of 
the  Northern  Highlands.  But,  once  fairly  employed  as  food, 
every  season  saw  a  greater  breadth  of  them  laid  down.  In  the 
North-Western  Highlands,  in  especial,  the  use  of  these  roots 
increased  from  the  year  1801  to  the  year  1846  nearly  a  hun- 
dredfold, and  came  at  length  to  form,  as  in  Ireland,  not  merely 
the  staple,  but  in  some  localities,  almost  the  only  food  of  the 
people ;  and  when  destroyed  by  disease  in  the  latter  year, 
famine  immediately  ensued  in  both  Ireland  and  the  Highlands. 
A  writer  in  the  Witness,  whose  letter  had  the  effect  of  bring- 
ing that  respectable  paper  under  the  eye  of  Mr.  Punch,  repre- 
sented the  Irish  famine  as  a  direct  judgment  on  the  Maynooth 
Endowment ;  while  another  writer,  a  member  of  the  Peace 
Association, — whose  letter  did  not  find  its  way  into  the  Wit- 
ness, though  it  reached  the  editor, — challenged  the  decision  on 
the  ground  that  the  Scotch  Highlanders,  who  were  greatly  op- 
posed to  Maynooth,  suffered  from  the  infliction  nearly  as  much 
as  the  Irish  themselves,  and  that  the  offence  punished  must 
have  been  surely  some  one  of  which  both  Highlanders  and  Irish 
had  been  guilty  in  common.  He,  however,  had  found  out,  ho 
said,  what  the  crime  visited  actually  was.  Both  the  Irish  and 
Highland  famines  were  judgments  upon  the  people  for  their 
great  homicidal  efficiency  as  soldiers  in  the  wars  of  the  empire, 
an  efficiency  which,  as  he  truly  remarked,  was  almost  equally 
characteristic  of  both  nations.  For  my  own  part,  I  have  been 
unable  hitherto  to  see  the  steps  which  conduct  to  such  pro- 
found conclusions  ;  and  am  content  simply  to  hold,  that  the 
superintending  Providence  who  communicated  to  man  a  cal- 
culating, forseeing  nature,  does  occasionally  get  angry  with 


254  MY   SCHOOLS   AND    SCHOOLMASTERS 

him,  and  inflict  judgments  upon  him.  when,  instead  of  exer- 
cising his  faculties,  he  sinks  to  a  level  lower  than  his  own, 
and  becomes  content,  like  some  of  the  inferior  animals,  to  live 
on  a  single  root. 

There  are  two  periods  favorable  to  observation, — an  early 
and  a  late  one.  A  fresh  eye  detects  external  traits  and  pecu- 
liarities among  a  people,  seen  for  the  first  time,  which  disap- 
pear as  they  become  familiar ;  but  it  is  not  until  after  repeat- 
ed opportunities  of  study,  and  a  prolonged  acquaintanceship, 
that  internal  characteristics  and  conditions  begin  to  be  rightly 
known.  During  the  first  fortnight  of  my  residence  in  this 
remote  district,  I  was  more  impressed  than  at  a  later  stage  by 
certain  peculiarities  of  manner  and  appearance  in  the  inhabit- 
ants. Dr.  Johnson  remarked  that  he  found  fewer  very  tall 
or  very  short  men  among  the  people  of  the  Hebrides,  than  in 
England :  I  was  now  struck  by  a  similar  mediocrity  of  size 
among  the  Highlanders  of  Western  Ross ;  five-sixths  of  the 
grown  men  seemed  to  average  between  five  feet  seven  and  five 
feet  nine  inches  in  height,  and  either  tall  or  short  men  I  found 
comparatively  rare.  The  Highlanders  of  the  eastern  coast 
were,  on  the  contrary,  at  that  period,  mayhap  still,  very  vari- 
ous of  stature, — some  of  them  exceedingly  diminutive,  others 
of  great  bulk  and  height ;  and,  as  might  be  seen  in  the  con- 
gregations of  the  parish  churches  removed  by  but  a  few  miles, 
there  were  marked  differences  in  this  respect  between  the 
people  of  contiguous  districts, — certain  tracts  of  plain  or  valley 
producing  larger  races  than  others.  I  was  inclined  to  believe 
at  the  time  that  the  middle-sized  Highlanders  of  the  west 
coast  were  a  less  mixed  race  than  the  unequally-sized  High- 
landers of  the  east :  I  at  least  found  corresponding  inequalities 
among  the  higher-born  Highland  families,  that,  as  shown  by 
their  genealogies,  blended  the  Norman  and  Saxon  with  the 
Celtic  blood  ;  and  as  the  unequally-sized  Highland  race  bor- 
dered on  that  Scandinavian  one  which  fringes  the  greater  part 
of  the  eastern  coast  of  Scotland,  I  inferred  that  there  had  been 
a  similar  blending  of  blood  among  them.  I  have  since  seen  in 
Gustav  Kombst's  Ethnographic  Map  of  the  British  Islands, 


OH,    THE   STOKY   OF   MY   EDUCATION.  255 

the  difference,  which  I  at  this  time  but  inferred,  indicated  by 
a  different  shade  of  color,  and  a  different  name.  The  High- 
landersof  the  east  coast  Kombst  terms  "  Scandinavian-Gaelic ;" 
those  of  the  west,  "  Gaelic-Scandinavian-Gaelic," — names  in- 
dicative, of  course,  of  the  proportions  in  which  he  holds  that 
they  possess  the  Celtic  blood.  Disparity  of  bulk  and  size 
appears  to  be  one  of  the  consequences  of  a  mixture  of  races  ; 
nor  does  the  induced  inequality  seem  restricted  to  the  phys- 
ical framework.  Minds  of  large  calibre,  and  possessed  of  the 
kingly  faculty,  come  first  into  view,  in  our  history,  among  the 
fused  tribes,  just  as  of  old  it  was  the  mixed  marriages  that 
first  produced  the  giants.  The  difference  in  size  which  I  re- 
marked in  particular  districts  of  the  Scandinavian  Gaelic  re- 
gion, separated,  in  some  instances,  by  but  a  ridge  of  hills  or 
an  expanse  of  moor,  must  have  been  a  result  of  the  old  clan 
divisions,  and  is  said  to  have  marked  the  clans  themselves 
very  strongly.  Some  of  them  were  of  a  greatly  more  ro- 
bust, and  some  of  a  slimmer  type,  than  others. 

1  was  struck  by  another  peculiarity  in  the  west  coast  High- 
landers. I  found  the  men  in  general  greatly  better-looking 
than  the  women,  and  that  in  middle  life  they  bore  their  years 
much  more  lightly.  The  females  seemed  old  and  haggard  at 
a  period  when  the  males  were  still  comparatively  fresh  and 
robust.  I  am  not  sure  whether  the  remark  may  not  in  some 
degree  apply  to  Highlanders  generally.  The  "  rugged  form  " 
and  "  harsher  features,"  which,  according  to  Sir  Walter,  "  mark 
the  mountain  band,"  accord  worse  with  the  female  than  with 
the  male  countenance  and  figure.  But  I  at  least  found  this 
discrepancy  in  the  appearance  of  the  sexes  greatly  more 
marked  on  the  west  than  on  the  eastern  coast;  and  saw  only 
too  much  reason  to  conclude,  that  it  was  owing  in  great  part  to 
the  disproportionably  large  share  of  crushing  labor  laid,  in 
the  district,  in  accordance  with  the  practice  of  a  barbarous 
time,  on  the  weaker  frame  of  the  female.  There  is,  however, 
a  style  of  female  loveliness  occasionally  though  rarely  exem- 
plified in  the  Highlands,  which  far  transcends  the  Saxon  or 
Scandinavian  type.     It  is  manifested  usually  in  extreme  youth, 


256 

— at  least  beta?  een  the  fourteenth  and  eighteenth  year  ;  and 
its  effect  we  find  happily  indicated  by  Wordsworth, — who 
seems  to  have  met  with  a  characteristic  specimen, — in  his 
lines  to  a  Highland  girl.  He  describes  her  as  possessing  as 
her  "  dower,"  "  a  very  shower  of  beauty."  Further,  however, 
he  describes  her  as  very  young. 

"Twice  seven  consenting  years  had  shed 
Their  utmost  bounty  on  her  head." 

I  was,  besides,  struck  at  this  time  by  finding,  that  while  al- 
most all  the  young  lads  under  twenty,  with  whom  I  came  in 
contact,  had  at  least  a  smattering  of  English,  I  found  only  a 
single  Highlander  turned  of  forty  with  whom  I  could  exchange 
a  word.  The  exceptional  Highlander  was,  however,  a  curi- 
osity in  his  way.  He  seemed  to  have  a  natural  turn  for  ac- 
quiring languages,  and  had  derived  his  English,  not  from  con- 
versation, but,  in  the  midst  of  a  Gaelic-speaking  people,  from 
the  study  of  the  Scriptures  in  our  common  English  version. 
His  application  of  Bible  language  to  ordinary  subjects  told  at 
times  with  rather  ludicrous  effect.  Upon  enquiring  of  him, 
on  one  occasion,  regarding  a  young  man  whom  he  wished  to 
employ  as  an  extra  laborer,  he  described  him  in  exactly  the 
words  in  which  David  is  described  in  the  chapter  that  records 
the  combat  with  Goliath,  as  "  but  a  youth,  and  ruddy,  and  of 
a  fair  countenance ;"  and  on  asking  where  he  thought  we  could 
get  a  few  loads  of  water-rolled  pebbles  for  causewaying  a 
floor,  he  directed  us  to  the  bed  of  a  neighboring  rivulet,  where 
we  might  "  choose  us,"  he  said,  "  smooth  stones  out  of  the 
brook."  He  spoke  with  great  deliberation,  translating  evi- 
dently his  Gaelic-thinking,  as  he  went  on,  into  Scriptural 
English. 


OR,    THE    STORY   OF   MY   EDUCATION  257 


CHAPTER  XIII. 


"  A  man  of  glee, 
With  hair  of  glittering  gray, 
As  blythe  a  man  as  you  could  see 
On  a  spring  holiday." 

Wordsworth. 


There  existed  at  this  time  no  geological  map  of  Scotland. 
Macculloeh's  did  not  appear  until  about  six  or  seven  years 
after  (in  1829  or  in  1830),  and  Sedgwick  and  Murchison's  in- 
teresting sketch  of  the  northern  formations*  not  until  at  least 
five  years  after  (1828).  And  so,  on  setting  out  on  the  morn- 
ing after  that  of  my  arrival,  to  provide  stones  for  our  future 
erection,  I  found  myself  in  a  terra  incognita,  new  to  the  quar- 
rier,  and  unknown  to  the  geologist.  Most  of  the  stratified 
primary  rocks  make  but  indifferent  building  materials  ;  and  in 
the  immediate  neighborhood  of  our  work  I  could  find  only  one 
of  the  worst  of  the  class, — the  schistose  gneiss.  On  consulting, 
however,  the  scenery  of  the  district,  I  marked  that  at  a  certain 
point  both  shores  of  the  open  sea-loch  on  whose  margin  we 
were  situated,  suddenly  changed  their  character.     The  abrupt 


u 

*  Appended  to  their  joint  paper  on  the  "  Deposits  contained  between  the  Scottish 
Primary  Rocks  and  Oolitic  Series,"  and  interesting,  as  the  fust  published  geological 
map  of  Scotland  to  the  nortli  of  the  Friths  of  Forth  and  Clyde. 


258  MY    SCHOOLS   Alsi)   SCHOOLMASTERS; 

rugged  hills  of  gneiss  that,  viewed  from  an  eminence,  re- 
sembled a  tumbling  sea,  suddenly  sank  into  low  brown  pro- 
montories, unbroken  by  ravines,  and  whose  eminences  were 
mere  flat  swellings ;  and  in  the  hope  of  finding  some  change 
of  formation  coincident  with  the  change  of  scenery,  I  set  out 
with  my  comrade  for  the  nearest  point  at  which  the  broken 
outline  passed  into  the  rectilinear  or  merely  undulatory  one. 
But  though  I  did  expect  a  change,  it  was  not  without  some 
degree  of  surprise  that,  immediately  after  passing  the  point  of 
junction,  I  found  myself  in  a  district  of  red  sandstone.  It 
was  a  hard,  compact,  dark-colored  stone,  but  dressed  readily 
to  pick  and  hammer,  and  made  excellent  corner-stones  and 
ashlar  ;  and  it  would  have  furnished  us  with  even  hewn  work 
for  our  building,  had  not  our  employer,  unacquainted,  like 
every  one  else  at  the  time,  with  the  mineral  capabilities  of 
the  locality,  brought  his  hewing  stone  in  a  sloop,  at  no  small 
expense,  through  the  Caledonian  Canal,  from  one  of  the  quar- 
ries of  Moray, — a  circuitous  voyage  of  more  than  two  hun- 
dred miles. 

Immediately  beside  where  we  opened  our  quarry,  there  was 
a  little  solitary  shieling:  it  was  well-nigh  such  an  edifice  as  f 
used  to  erect  when  a  boy, — some  eight  or  ten  feet  in  length, 
and  of  so  humble  an  altitude,  that,  when  standing  erect  in  the 
midst,  I  could  lay  my  hand  on  the  roof-tree.  A  heath-bed 
occupied  one  of  the  corners ;  a  few  gray  embers  were  smoul- 
dering in  the  middle  of  the  floor ;  a  pot  lay  beside  them,  ready 
for  use,  half-filled  with  cockles  and  razor-fish,  the  spoils  of  the 
morning  ebb ;  and  a  cog  of  milk  occupied  a  small  shelf  that 
projected  from  the  gable  above.  Such  were  the  contents  of 
the  shieling.  Its  only  inmate,  a  lively  little  old  man,  sat  out- 
side, at  once  tending  a  few  cows  grouped  on  the  moor,  and 
employed  in  stripping  with  a  pocket-knife,  long  slender  fila- 
ments from  off  a  piece  of  moss  fir ;  and  as  he  wrought  and 
watched,  he  crooned  a  Gaelic  song  not  very  musically,  may- 
hap, but,  like  the  happy  song  of  the  humble  bee,  there  was 
perfect  content  in  every  tone.  He  had  a  great  many  curious 
questions  to  ask  in  his  native  Gaelic,  of  my  comrade,  regard* 


OR,    THE    STORY   OF   MY   EDUCATION.  259 

ing  our  employment  and  our  employer  ;  and  when  satisfied, 
he  began,  I  perceived,  like  the  Highlander  of  the  previous 
evening,  to  express  very  profound  commiseration  for  me.  "Is 
that  man  also  pitying  me  V  I  asked.  "  O  yes,  very  much," 
was  the  reply :  "  he  does  not  at  all  see  how  you  are  to  live  in 
Gairloch  without  Gaelic."  I  was  reminded  by  the  shieling 
and  its  happy  inmate,  of  one  of  my  father's  experiences,  as 
communicated  to  me  by  Uncle  James.  In  the  course  of  a 
protracted  kelp  voyage  among  the  Hebrides,  he  had  landed  in 
his  boat,  before  entering  one  of  the  sounds  of  the  Long  Island, 
to  procure  a  pilot,  but  found  in  the  fisherman's  cottage  on  which 
he  had  directed  his  course,  only  the  fisherman's  wife, — a  young 
creature  of  not  more  than  eighteen, — engaged  in  nursing  her 
child  and  singing  a  Gaelic  song,  in  tones  expressive  of  a  light 
heart,  till  the  rocks  rang  again.  A  heath  bed,  a  pot  of  baked 
clay,  of  native  manufacture,  fashioned  by  the  hand,  and  a  heap 
of  fish  newly  caught,  seemed  to  constitute  the  only  wealth  of 
the  cottage ;  but  its  mistress  was,  notwithstanding,  one  of  the 
happiest  of  women  ;  and  deeply  did  she  commiserate  the  poor 
sailors,  and  earnestly  wish  for  the  return  of  her  husband,  that 
he  might  assist  them  in  their  perplexity.  The  husband  at 
length  appeared.  "  O,"  he  asked,  "  after  the  first  greeting, 
"  have  ye  any  salt  1"  "  Plenty,"  said  the  master ;  "  and  you, 
I  see,  from  your  supply  of  fresh  fish,  want  it  very  much ;  but 
come,  pilot  us  through  the  sound,  and  you  shall  have  as  much 
salt  as  you  require."  And  so  the  vessel  got  a  pilot  and  the 
fisherman  got  salt ;  but  never  did  my  father  forget  the  light- 
hearted  song  of  the  happy  mistress  of  that  poor  Highland  cot- 
tage. It  was  one  of  the  palpable  characteristics  of  our  Scottish 
Highlanders,  for  at  least  the  first  thirty  years  of  the  century, 
that  the)  were  contented  enough,  as  a  people,  to  find  more  to 
pity  than  to  envy  in  the  condition  of  their  neighbors ;  and  I 
remember  that  at  this  time,  and  for  years  after,  I  used  to  deem 
the  trait  a  good  one.  I  have  now,  however,  my  doubts  on  the 
subject,  and  am  not  quite  sure  whether  a  content  so  general 
as  to  be  national  may  not,  in  certain  circumstances,  be  rather 
a  vice  than  a  virtue.    It  is  certainly  no  virtue  when  it  has  the 


260  MY   SCHOOLS   AND   SCHOOLMASTERS; 

effect  of  arresting  either  individuals  or  peoples  in  their  course 
of  development ;  and  is  perilously  allied  to  great  suffering, 
when  the  men  who  exemplify  it  are  so  thoroughly  happy  amid 
the  mediocrities  of  the  present,  that  they  fail  to  make  provis- 
ion for  the  contingencies  of  the  future. 

We  were  joined  in  about  a  fortnight  by  the  other  workmen 
from  the  low  country,  and  I  resigned  my  temporary  charge 
(save  that  I  still  retained  the  time-book  in  my  master's  be- 
half) into  the  hands  of  an  ancient  mason,  remarkable  over  the 
north  of  Scotland  for  his  skill  as  an  operative,  and  who,  though 
he  was  now  turned  of  sixty,  was  still  able  to  build  and  hew 
considerably  more  than  the  youngest  and  most  active  man  in 
the  squad.  He  was  at  this  time  the  only  survivor  of  three 
brothers,  all  masons,  and  all  not  merely  first-class  workmen,  but 
of  a  class  to  which,  at  least  to  the  north  of  the  Grampians,  only 
they  themselves  belonged,  and  very  considerably  in  advance 
of  the  first.  And  on  the  removal  of  the  second  of  the  three 
brothers  to  the  south  of  Scotland,  it  was  found  that,  amid  the 
stone-cutters  of  Glasgow,  David  Eraser  held  relatively  the 
same  place  that  he  had  done  among  those  of  the  north.  I  have 
been  told  by  Mr.  Kenneth  Matheson, — a  gentleman  well  known 
as  a  master-builder  in  the  west  of  Scotland, — that  in  erecting 
some  hanging  stairs  of  polished  stone,  ornamented  in  front 
and  at  the  outer  edge  by  the  common  fillet  and  torus,  his  or- 
dinary workmen  used  to  complete  for  him  their  one  step  apiece 
per  day,  and  David  Fraser  his  three  steps,  finished  equally  well. 
It  is  easily  conceivable  how,  in  the  higher  works  of  art,  one 
man  should  excel  a  thousand, — nay,  how  he  should  have  nei- 
ther competitor  when  living,  nor  successor  when  dead.  The 
English  gentleman  who,  after  the  death  of  Canova,  asked  a 
surviving  brother  of  the  sculptor  whether  he  proposed  carry- 
ing on  Canova's  business,  found  that  he  had  achieved  in  the 
query  an  unintentional  joke.  But  in  the  commoner  avocations 
there  appear  no  such  differences  between  man  and  man  ;  and 
it  may  seem  strange  how,  in  ordinary  stone-cutting,  one  man 
could  thus  perform  the  work  of  three.  My  acquaintance  with 
old  John  Fraser  showed  me  how  very  much  the  ability  de- 


OK,   THE   STORY   OF  MY  EDUCATION.  261 

pended  on  a  natural  faculty.  John's  strength  had  never  been 
above  the  average  of  that  of  Scotchmen,  and  it  was  now  consid- 
erably reduced  ;  nor  did  his  mallet  deal  more  or  ..eavier  blows 
than  that  of  the  common  workman.  He  had,  however,  an  ex- 
traordinary power  of  conceiving  of  the  finished  piece  of  work, 
as  lying  within  the  rude  stone  from  which  it  was  his  business 
to  disinter  it ;  and  while  ordinary  stone-cutters  had  to  repeat 
and  re-repeat  their  lines  and  draughts,  and  had  in  this  way 
virtually  to  give  to  their  work  several  surfaces  in  detail  ere 
hey  reached  the  true  one,  old  John  cut  upon  the  true  figure 
at  once,  and  made  one  surface  serve  for  all.  In  building,  too, 
he  exercised  a  similar  power  :  he  hammer-dressed  his  stones 
with  fewer  strokes  than  other  workmen,  and  in  fitting  the  in- 
terspaces between  stones  already  laid,  always  picked  from  out 
the  heap  at  his  feet  the  stone  that  exactly  fitted  the  place ; 
while  other  operatives  busied  themselves  in  picking  up  stones 
that  were  too  small  or  too  large  ;  or,  if  they  set  themselves 
to  reduce  the  too  large  ones,  reduced  them  too  little  or  too 
much,  and  had  to  fit  and  fit  again.  Whether  building  or  hew- 
ing, John  never  seemed  in  a  hurry.  He  has  been  seen,  when 
far  advanced  in  life,  working  very  leisurely,  as  became  his 
years,  on  the  one  side  of  a  wall,  and  two  stout  young  fellows 
building  against  him  on  the  other  side, — toiling,  apparently, 
twice  harder  than  he,  but  the  old  man  always  contriving  to 
keep  a  little  ahead  of  them  both. 

David  Fraser  I  never  saw ;  but  as  a  hewer  he  was  said  con 
siderably  to  excel  even  his  brother  John.  On  hearing  that  it 
had  been  remarked  among  a  party  of  Edinburgh  masons,  that, 
though  regarded  as  the  first  of  Glasgow  stone-cutters,  he 
would  find  in  the  eastern  capital  at  least  his  equals,  he  attired 
himself  most  uncouthly  in  a  long-tailed  coat  of  tartan,  and, 
looking  to  the  life  the  untamed,  untaught,  conceited  little 
Celt,  he  presented  himself  one  Monday  morning,  armed  with 
a  letter  of  introduction  from  a  Glasgow  builder,  before  the 
foreman  of  an  Edinburgh  squad  of  masons  engaged  upon  one 
of  the  finei  buildings  at  that  time  in  the  course  of  erection. 
The  letter  specified  neither  his  qualifications  nor  his  name :  it 


262  MY  SCHOOLS  AND  SCHOOLMASTERS; 

had  beer,  written  merely  to  secure  for  him  the  necessary  em. 
ployment,  and  the  necessary  employment  it  did  secure.  The 
better  workmen  of  the  party  were  engaged,  on  his  arrival,  in 
hewing  columns,  each  of  which  was  deemed  sufficient  work  for 
a  week  ;  and  David  was  asked,  somewhat  incredulously,  by  the 
foreman,  "  if  he  could  hew  V  "  O  yes,  he  thought  he  could 
hew."  "  Could  he  hew  columns  such  as  these  ?"  "  O  yes,  he 
thought  he  could  hew  columns  such  as  these."  A  mass  of 
stone,  in  which  a  possible  column  lay  hid,  was  accordingly 
placed  before  David,  not  under  cover  of  the  shed,  which  was 
already  occupied  by  workmen,  but,  agreeably  to  David's  own 
request,  directly  in  front  of  it,  where  he  might  be  seen  by  all, 
and  where  he  straightway  commenced  a  most  extraordinary 
course  of  antics.  Buttoning  his  long  tartan  coat  fast  around 
him,  he  would  first  look  along  the  stone  from  the  one  end, 
anon  from  the  other,  and  then  examine  it  in  front  and  rear  ; 
or,  quitting  it  altogether  for  the  time,  he  would  take  up  his 
stand  beside  the  other  workmen,  and,  after  looking  at  them 
with  great  attention,  return  and  give  it  a  few  taps  with  the 
maliet,  in  a  style  evidently  imitative  of  theirs,  but  monstrously 
a  caricature.  The  shed  all  that  day  resounded  with  roars  of 
laughter ;  and  the  only  thoroughly  grave  man  on  the  ground 
was  he  who  occasioned  the  mirth  of  all  the  others.  Next 
morning  David  again  buttoned  his  coat ;  but  he  got  on  much 
better  this  day  than  the  former :  he  was  less  awkward  and  less 
idle,  though  not  less  observant  than  before ;  and  he  succeeded 
ere  evening  in  tracing,  in  workman-like  fashion,  a  few  draughts 
along  the  future  column.  He  was  evidently  greatly  improv- 
ing. On  the  morning  of  Wednesday  he  threw  off  his  coat ; 
and  it  was  seen  that,  though  by  no  means  in  a  hurry,  he  was 
seriously  at  work.  There  were  no  more  jokes  or  laughter;  and 
it  was  whispered  in  the  evening  that  the  strange  Highlander  had 
made  astonishing  progress  during  the  day.  By  the  middle  of 
Thursday  he  had  made  up  for  his  two  days'  trifling,  and  was 
abreast  of  the  othei  workmen ;  before  night  he  was  far  ahead 
of  them ;  and  ere  the  evening  of  Friday,  when  they  had  still 
a  full  day's  work  on  each  of  their  columns,  David's  was  com- 


OK,    THE    STORY   OF   MY   EDUCATION.  263 

pleted  in  a  style  that  defied  criticism  ;  and,  his  tartan  coat 
again  buttoned  around  him,  he  sat  resting  himself  beside  it. 
The  foreman  went  out,  and  greeted  him.  "  Well,"  he  said, 
"  you  have  beaten  us  all :  you  certainly  can  hew  !"  "  Yes," 
said  David  ;  "  I  thought  1  could  hew  columns.  Did  the  othei 
men  take  much  more  than  a  week  to  learn  f  "  Come,  come, 
David  Fraser"  replied  the  foreman  ;  "  we  all  guess  who  you 
are  :  you  have  had  your  joke  out ;  and  now,  I  suppose,  we 
must  give  you  your  week's  wages,  and  let  you  away."  "Yes,' 
said  David ;  "  work  waits  for  me  in  Glasgow ;  but  I  just 
thought  it  might  be  well  to  know  how  you  hewed  on  this 
east  side  of  the  country." 

John  Fraser  was  a  shrewd,  sarcastic  old  man,  much  liked, 
however,  by  his  brother  workmen ;  though  his  severe  sayings 
— which, never  accompanied  by  any  ill  nature,  were  always  tol- 
erated in  the  barrack — did  both  himself  and  them  occasional 
harm  when  repeated  outside.  To  men  who  have  to  live  for 
months  together  on  oatmeal  and  salt,  the  difference  between 
porridge  with  and  porridge  without  milk  is  a  very  grave  dif- 
ference indeed,  both  in  point  of  salutariness  and  comfort ;  and 
I  had  succeeded  in  securing,  on  the  ordinary  terms,  ere  the 
arrival  of  John,  what  was  termed  a  set  of  skimmed  milk  from 
the  wife  of  the  gentleman  at  whose  dwelling-house  we  were 
engaged  in  working.  The  skimmed  milk  was,  however,  by 
no  means  good ;  it  was  thin,  blue,  and  sour ;  and  we  received 
it  without  complaint  only  because  we  knew  that,  according  to 
the  poet,  it  was  "  better  just  than  want  aye,"  and  that  there 
\\as  no  other  dairy  in  that  part  of  the  country.  But  old  John 
was  less  prudent ;  and,  taking  the  dairy-maid  to  task  in  his 
quiet  ironical  style,  he  began  by  expressing  wonder  and  regret 
that  a  grand  lady  like  her  mistress  should  be  unable  to  distin- 
guish the  difference  between  milk  and  wine.  The  maid  in- 
dignantly denied  the  fact  in  toto :  her  mistress,  she  said,  did 
know  the  difference.  Oh  no,  replied  John  ;  wine  always  gets 
better  the  longer  it  is  kept,  and  milk  always  the  worse  ;  but 
your  mistress,  not  knowing  the  difference,  keeps  her  milk  very 
long,  in  order  to  make  it  better,  and  makes  it  so  very  bad  in 


264  MY  SCHOOLS 

consequence,  that  there  are  some  days  we  can  scarce  eat  it  ftt 
all.  The  dairy-maid  bridled  up,  and,  communicatir.g  the  re- 
mark to  her  mistr°ss,  we  were  told  next  morning  that  we  might 
go  for  our  milk  to  the  next  dairy,  if  we  pleased,  but  that  we 
would  get  none  from  her.  And  so,  for  four  months  thereafter, 
we  had  to  do  penance  for  the  joke,  on  that  not  very  luxurious 
viand  "  dry  porridge."  The  pleasures  of  the  table  had  occu- 
pied but  small  space  amid  the  \ery  scanty  enjoyments  of  our 
barrack  even  before,  and  they  were  now  so  considerably  re- 
duced, that  I  could  have  almost  wished  at  meal-times  that — 
like  the  inhabitants  of  the  moon,  as  described  by  Baron  Mun- 
chausen— I  could  open  up  a  port-hole  in  my  side,  and  lay  in 
at  once  provisions  enough  for  a  fortnight ;  but  the  infliction 
told  considerably  more  on  our  constitutions  than  on  our  appe- 
tites ;  and  we  all  became  subject  to  small  but  very  painful 
boils  in  the  muscular  parts  of  the  body, — a  species  of  disease 
which  seems  to  be  scarce  less  certainly  attendant  on  the  ex- 
clusive use  of  oatmeal,  than  sea-scurvy  on  the  exclusive  use 
of  salt  meat.  Old  John,  however,  though  in  a  certain  sense 
the  author  of  our  calamity,  escaped  all  censure,  while  a  dou 
ble  portion  fell  to  the  share  of  the  gentleman's  wife. 

I  never  met  a  man  possessed  of  a  more  thoroughly  mathe- 
matical head  than  this  ancient  mason.  I  know  not  that  he 
ever  saw  a  copy  of  Euclid  ;  but  the  principles  of  the  work 
seemed  to  lie  as  self-evident  truths  in  his  mind.  In  the  abil- 
ity, too,  of  drawing  shrewd  inferences  from  natural  pheno- 
mena, old  John  Fraser  excelled  all  the  other  untaught  men  I 
ever  knew.  Until  my  acquaintance  with  him  commenced,  1 
had  been  accustomed  to  hear  the  removal  of  what  was  widely 
known  in  the  north  of  Scotland  as  "  the  travelled  stone  of 
Petty,"  attributed  to  supernatural  agency.  An  enormous  boul- 
der had  been  carried  in  the  night-time,  by  the  fairies,  it  was 
said,  from  its  resting-place  on  the  sea-beach,  into  the  middle 
of  a  little  bay, — a  journey  of  several  hundred  feet ;  but  old 
John,  though  he  had  not  been  on  the  spot  at  the  time,  at  once 
inferred  that  it  had  been  carried,  not  by  the  fairies,  but  by  a 
thick  cake  of  ice,  considerable  enough,  when  firmly  clasped 


Ott,    THE   STORY   OF   MY   EDUCATION.  265 


round  it,  to  float  it  away.     He  had  seen,  he  told  me,  stones 
of  very  considerable  size  floated  off  by  ice  on  the  shore  opposite 
his  cottage,  in  the  upper  reaches  of  the  Cromarty  Frith  :  ice 
was  an  agent  that  sometimes  "  walked  off  with  great  stones  ;" 
whereas  he  had  no  evidence  whatever  that  the  fairies  had  any 
powers  that  way ;  and  so  he  accepted  the  agent  .vhich  he  knew, 
as  the  true  one  in  the  removal  of  the  travelled  stone,  and  not 
the  hypothetical  agents,  of  which  he  knew  nothing.    Such  was 
the  natural   philosophy   of  old  John  ;  and  in  this  special  in- 
stance geologic  science  has  since  fully  confirmed  his  decision. 
He  was  chiefly  a  favorite  among  us,  however,  from  his  even 
and  cheerful  temper,  and  his  ability  of  telling  humorous  sto- 
ries, that  used  to  set  the  barrack  in  a  roar,  and  in  which  he 
never  spared  himself,  if  the  exhibition  of  a  weakness  or  absurd- 
ity gave  but  point  to  the  fun.     His  narrative  of  a  visit  to  Inver- 
ness, which  he  had  made  when  an  apprentice  lad,  to  see  a 
sheep-stealer  hung,  and  his  description  of  the  terrors  of  a  night- 
journey  back,  in  which  he  fancied  he  saw  men  waiving  in  the 
wind  on  almost  every  tree,  till,  on  reaching  his  solitary  bar- 
rack, he  was  utterly  prostrated  by  the  apparition  of  his  own 
great-coat  suspended  from  a  pin,  has  oftener  than  once  con- 
vulsed us  with  laughter.     But  John's  humorous  confessions, 
based  as  they  always  were  on  a  strong  good  sense,  that  always 
saw  the  early  folly  in  its  most  ludicrous  aspect,  never  lowered 
him  in  our  eyes.     Of  his  wonderful  skill  as  a  workman,  much 
was  incommunicable ;  but  it  was  at  least  something  to  know 
the  principles  on  which  he  directed  the  operations  of  what  a 
phrenologist  would  perhaps  term  his  extraordinary  faculties 
of  form  and  size ;  and  so  I  recognize  old  John  as  one  of  not  the 
least  useful   nor  able  of  my  many  teachers.     Some  of  his 
professional  lessons  were  of  a  kind  which  the  south  and  east 
country  mason  would  be  the  better  for  knowing.     In  that  rainy 
district  of  Scotland  of  which  we  at  this  time  occupied  the  cen 
tral  tract,  rubble  walls  built  in  the  ordinary  style  leak  like  the 
bad  roofs  of  other  parts  of  the  country ;  and  mansion-houses 
constructed  within  its  precincts  by  qualified  workmen  from 
Edinburgh  and  Glasgow  hf»ve  been  found  to  admit  the  water 


266 

in  such  torrents  as  to  be  uninhabitable,  until  their  more  ex 
posed  walls  had  been  slated  over  like  their  roofs.  Old  John, 
however,  always  succeeded  in  building  water-tight  walls.  De 
parting  from  the  ordinary  rule  of  the  builder  elsewhere,  and 
which  on  the  east  coast  of  Scotland  he  himself  always  respect- 
ed, he  slightly  elevated  the  under  beds  of  his  stones,  instead 
of  laying  them,  as  usual,  on  the  dead  level ;  while  along  the 
edges  of  their  upper  beds  he  struck  off  a  small  rude  champer  ■ 
and  by  these  simple  contrivances,  the  rain,  though  driven  witl 
violence  against  his  work,  coursed  in  streams  along  its  foce, 
without  entering  into  the  interior  and  soaking  through. 

For  about  six  weeks  we  had  magnificent  weather, — clear 
sunny  skies  and  calm  seas ;  and  I  greatly  enjoyed  my  even- 
ing rambles  amid  the  hills,  or  along  the  sea-shore.  I  was 
struck,  in  these  walks,  by  the  amazing  abundance  of  the  wild 
flowers  which  covered  the  natural  meadows  and  lower  hill- 
slopes, — an  abundance,  as  I  have  since  remarked,  equally  char- 
acteristic of  both  the  northern  and  western  islands  of  Scot- 
land. The  lower  slopes  of  Gairloch,  of  western  Sutherland, 
of  Orkney,  and  of  the  northern  Hebrides  generally, — though 
for  the  purposes  of  the  agriculturist,  vegetation  languishes, 
and  wheat  is  never  reared, — are  by  many  degrees  richer  in 
wild  flowers  than  the  fat  loamy  meadows  of  England.  They 
resemble  gaudy  pieces  of  carpeting,  as  abundant  in  petals  as  in 
leaves.  Little  of  the  rare  is  to  be  detected  in  these  meadows, 
save,  perhaps,  that  in  those  of  western  Sutherland  a  few  Alpine 
plants  may  be  found  at  a  greatly  lower  level  than  elsewhere  in 
Britain ;  but  the  vast  profusion  of  blossoms  borne  by  species 
common  to  almost  every  other  part  of  the  kingdom,  imparts 
to  them  an  apparently  novel  character.  We  may  detect,  I  am 
inclined  to  think,  in  this  singular  floral  profusion,  the  opera* 
tion  of  a  law  not  less  influential  in  the  animal  than  in  ihe 
vegetable  world,  which,  when  hardship  presses  upon  the  life 
of  the  individual  shrub  or  quadruped,  so  as  to  threaten  its 
vitality,  renders  it  fruitful  in  behalf  of  its  species.  I  have  seen 
the  principle  strikingly  exemplified  in  the  common  tobacco 
plant,  when  reared  in  a  northern  country  in  the  open  air. 


267 

Year  after  year  it  continued  to  degenerate,  and  to  exhibit  a 
smaller  leaf  and  shorter  stem,  until  the  successors  of  what  in 
the  first  year  of  trial  had  been  vigorous  plants,  of  some  three 
to  four  feet  in  height,  had  in  the  sixth  or  eighth  become  mere 
weeds  of  scarce  as  many  inches.  But  while  the  as  yet  unde- 
generate  plant  had  merely  borne  atop  a  few  florets,  which  pro- 
duced a  small  quantity  of  exceedingly  minute  seeds,  the  stunted 
weed,  its  descendant,  was  so  thickly  covered  over  in  its  season 
with  its  pale  yellow  bells,  as  to  present  the  appearance  of  a 
nosegay  ;  and  the  seeds  produced  were  not  only  bulkier  in  the 
mass,  but  also  individually  of  much  greater  size.  The  tobacco 
had  grown  productive  in  proportion  as  it  had  degenerated. 
In  the  common  scurvy-grass,  too, — remarkable,  with  some 
other  plants,  for  taking  its  place  among  both  the  productions 
of  our  Alpine  heights  and  of  our  sea-shores, — it  will  be  found 
that,  in  proportion  as  its  habitat  proves  ungenial,  and  its  leaves 
and  stems  become  dwarfish  and  thin,  its  little  white  cruciform 
flowers  increase,  till,  in  localities  where  it  barely  exists,  as  if 
on  the  edge  of  extinction,  we  find  the  entire  plant  forming  a 
dense  bundle  of  seed-vessels,  each  charged  to  the  full  with 
seed.  And  in  the  gay  meadows  of  Gairloch  and  Orkney, 
crowded  with  a  vegetation  that  approaches  its  northern  limit 
of  production,  we  detect  what  seems  to  be  the  same  principle 
chronically  operative  ;  and  hence,  it  would  seem,  their  extra- 
ordinary gaiety.  Their  richly  blossoming  plants  are  the  poor 
productive  Irish  of  the  vegetable  world ;  for  Doubleday 
seems  to  be  quite  in  the  right  in  holding,  that  the  law  extends 
to  not  only  the  inferior  animals,  but  to  our  own  species  also. 
The  lean,  ill-fed  sow  and  rabbit  rear,  it  has  been  long  known, 
a  greatly  more  numerous  progeny  than  the  same  animals 
w  hen  well  cared  for  and  fat ;  and  every  horse  and  cattle  breeder 
knows  that  to  over-feed  his  animals  proves  a  sure  mode  of 
rendering  them  sterile.  The  sheep,  if  tolerably  well  pastured, 
brings  forth  only  a  single  lamb  at  a  birth  ;  but  if  half-starved 
and  lean,  the  chance's  are  that  it  may  bring  forth  two  or  three. 
And  so  it  is  also  wit)  the  greatly  higher  human  race.  Place 
them  in  circumstance'  of  degradation  and  hardship  so  extreme 


268  MY  SCHOOLS  AND   SCHOOLMASTERS; 

as  almost  to  threaten  their  existence  as  individuals,  and  they 
increase,  as  if  in  behalf  of  the  species,  with  a  rapidity  without 
precedent  in  circumstances  of  greater  comfort.  The  aristo- 
cratic families  of  a  country  are  continually  running  out ;  and 
it  requires  frequent  creations  to  keep  up  the  House  of  Lords ; 
whereas  our  poorer  people  seem  increasing  in  more  than  the 
arithmetical  ratio.  In  Syke,  though  fully  two-thirds  of  the 
population  emigrated  early  in  the  latter  half  of  the  last  cen- 
tury, a  single  generation  had  scarce  passed  ere  the  gap  was 
completely  filled  ;  and  miserable  Ireland,  as  it  existed  ere  the 
famine,  would  have  been  of  itself  sufficient,  had  the  human 
family  no  other  breeding-place,  to  people  in  a  few  ages  the 
world.  Here,  too,  in  close  neighborhood  with  the  flower- 
covered  meadows,  were  there  miserable  cottages  that  were 
swarming  with  children, — cottages  in  which,  for  nearly  the 
half  of  every  twelvemonth,  the  cereals  were  unknown  as  food, 
and  whose  over-toiled  female  inmates  did  all  the  domestic 
work,  and  more  than  half  the  work  of  the  little  fields  outside. 
How  exquisitely  the  sun  sets  in  a  clear,  calm,  summer  even- 
ing over  the  blue  Hebrides  !  Within  less  than  a  mile  of  our 
barrack  there  rose  a  tall  hill,  whose  bold  summit  commanded 
all  the  Western  Isles,  from  Sleat  in  Skye,  to  the  Butt  of  the 
Lewis.  To  the  south  lay  the  trap  islands ;  to  the  north  and 
west,  the  gneiss  ones.  They  formed,  however,  seen  from  this 
hill,  one  great  group,  which,  just  as  the  sun  had  sunk,  and  sea 
and  sky  were  so  equally  bathed  in  gold  as  to  exhibit  on  the 
horizon  no  dividing  line,  seemed  in  their  transparent  purple, — - 
darker  or  lighter  according  to  the  distance, — a  group  of  lovely 
clouds,  that,  though  moveless  in  the  calm,  the  first  light  breeze 
might  sweep  away.  Even  the  flat  promontories  of  sandstone 
which,  like  outstretched  arms,  enclosed  the  outer  reaches  of 
the  foreground, — promontories  edged  with  low  red  cliffs,  and 
covered  with  brown  heath, — used  to  borrow  at  these  tiir.es, 
from  the  soft  yellow  beam,  a  beauty  not  their  own.  Amid 
the  inequalities  of  the  gneiss  region  within, — a  region  more 
broken  and  precipitous,  but  of  humbler  altitude,  than  the  great 
gneiss  tr^ct  of  the  midland  Highlands, — the  chequered  light 


01.,  THE   STORY   OF   MY   EDUCATION.  269 

and  shade  lay,  as  the  sun  declined,  in  strongly-contrasted 
patches,  that  betrayed  the  abrupt  inequalities  of  the  ground, 
and  bore,  when  all  around  was  warm,  tinted  and  bright,  a  hue 
of  cold  neutral  gray  ;  while  immediately  over  and  beyond  this 
rough  sombre  base  there  rose  two  noble  pyramids  of  red  sand- 
stone, about  two  thousand  feet  in  height,  that  used  to  flare  to 
the  setting  sun  in  bright  crimson,  and  whose  nearly  horizontal 
strata,  deeply  scored  along  the  lines,  like  courses  of  ashlar  in 
an  ancient  wall,  added  to  the  mural  effect  communicated  by 
their  bare  fronts  and  steep  rectilinear  outlines.  These  tall 
pyramids  form  the  terminal  members,  towards  the  south,  of  an 
extraordinary  group  of  sandstone  hills,  of  denudation  unique 
in  the  British  islands,  to  which  I  have  already  referred,  and 
which  extends  from  the  northern  boundary  of  Assynt  to  near 
Applecross.  But  though  I  formed  at  this  time  my  first  ac- 
quaintance with  the  group,  it  was  not  until  many  years  after 
that  I  had  an  opportunity  of  determining  the  relations  of 
their  component  beds  to  each  other,  and  to  the  fundamental 
rocks  of  the  country. 

At  times  my  walks  were  directed  along  the  sea-shore.  Nat- 
uralists well  know  how  much  the  western  coasts  of  Scotland 
differ  in  their  productions  from  its  eastern  ones ;  but  it  was  a 
difference  wholly  new  to  me  at  this  time;  and  though  my 
limited  knowledge  enabled  me  to  detect  it  in  but  compar- 
atively few  particulars,  I  found  it  no  uninteresting  task  to  trace 
it  for  myself  in  even  these  few.  I  was  first  attracted  by  one  of 
the  larger  sea-weeds,  Himanthalia  lorea, — with  its  cup-shaped 
disc  and  long  thong-like  receptacles, — which  I  found  very 
abundant  on  the  rocks  here,  but  which  I  had  never  seen  in 
the  upper  reaches  of  the  Moray  Frith,  and  which  is  by  no 
means  very  common  on  any  portion  of  the  east  coast.  From 
the  sea  weeds  I  passed  to  the  shells,  among  which  I  detected 
not  only  a  difference  in  the  proportions  in  which  the  various 
species  occurred,  but  also  species  that  were  new  to  me, — such 
as  a  shell,  not  rare  in  Gairloch,  JVassa  reticulata,  but  rarely  it 
ever  seen  in  the  Moray  or  Cromarty  Friths ;  and  three  other 
shells  which  I  saw  here  for  the  first  time,  Trochus  umbihcatu% 


270  MY  SCHOOLS  ANL    SCHOOLMASTERS  ; 

Trockus  magus,  and  Pecten  niveus*  I  found,  too,  that  the 
common  edible  oyster,  ostrca  edulis,  which  on  the  east  coast 
lies  always  in  comparatively  deep  water,  is  sometimes  found 
in  the  Gairloch,  as,  for  instance,  in  the  little  bay  opposite 
Flowerdale,  in  beds  laid  bare  by  the  ebb  of  stream-tides.  It 
is  always  interesting  to  come  unexpectedly  either  upon  a  new 
species  01  a  striking  peculiarity  in  an  old  one ;  and  I  deemed 
it  a  curious  and  suggestive  fact,  that  there  should  be  British 
shells  still  restricted  to  our  western  shores,  and  that  have  not 
yet  made  their  way  into  the  German  Ocean,  along  the  coasts 
of  either  extremity  of  the  island.  Are  we  to  infer  that  they 
are  shells  of  more  recent  origin  than  the  widely-diffused  ones  1 
or  are  they  merely  feebler  in  their  reproductive  powers  1  and 
is  the  German  Ocean,  as  some  of  our  geologists  hold,  a  com- 
paratively modern  sea,  into  which  only  the  hardier  mollusca 
of  rapid  increase  have  yet  made  their  way  1  Further,  I  found 
that  the  true  fishes  differ  considerably  in  the  group  on  the 
opposite  sides  of  the  island.  The  haddock  and  whiting  are 
greatly  more  common  on  the  east  coast :  the  hake  and  horse 
mackerel  very  much  more  abundant  on  the  west.  Even  where 
the  species  are  the  same  on  both  sides,  the  varieties  are  differ- 
ent. The  herring  of  the  west  coast  is  a  short,  thick,  richly- 
flavored  fish,  greatly  superior  to  the  large  lean  variety  so 
abundant  on  the  east ;  whereas  the  west-coast  cod  are  large- 
headed,  thin-bodied,  pale-colored  fishes,  inferior,  even  in  their 
best  season,  to  the  darker-colored,  small-headed  variety  of 
the  east.  In  no  respect  do  the  two  coasts  differ  more,  at  least 
to  the  north  of  the  Grampians,  than  in  the  transparency  of  the 
water.     The  bottom  is  rarely  seen  on  the  east  coast  at  a  depth 


*  There  are  only  two  of  these  exclusively  west-coast  shells, —  Trockus  umbilica- 
his  and  Pecten  nivcus.  As  neither  of  them  has  yet  been  detected  in  any  Ter- 
tiary formation,  they  are  in  all  probability  shells  of  comparatively  recent  origin, 
that  cam  i  into  existence  in  some  western  centre  of  creation  ;  whereas  speci- 
mens of  Trockus  magus  and  JSTassa  reticulata,  which  occasionally  occur  on  the 
eastern  coasts  of  the  kingdom,  I  have  also  found  in  a  Pleistocene  deposit.  Thus, 
*-he  more  widely-spread  shells  seem  to  be  also  the  shells  of  more  ancient  stand- 


271 

ol  more  than  twenty  feet,  and  not  often  at  more  than  twelve ; 
whereas  on  the  west  I  have  seen  it  very  distinctly,  during  a 
tract  of  dry  weather,  at  a  depth  of  sixty  or  seventy  feet.  The 
handles  of  the  spears  used  in  Gairloch  in  spearing  flat  fish  and 
the  common  edible  crab  ( Cancer  Pag  ur us),  are  sometimes  five- 
and-twenty  feet  in  length, — a  length  which  might  in  vain  be 
given  to  spear-handles  upon  the  east  coast,  seeing  that  there, 
at  such  a  depth  of  water,  flat  fish  or  crab  was  never  yet  seen 
from  the  surface. 

Deceived  by  this  transparency,  I  have  plunged  oftener  than 
once  over  head  and  ears,  when  bathing  among  the  rocks,  in 
pools  where  I  had  confidently  expected  to  find  footing.  From 
a  rock  that  rose  abrupt  as  a  wall  from  the  low-water  level  of 
stream -tides  to  a  little  above  the  line  of  flood,  I  occasionally 
amused  myself,  when  the  evenings  were  calm,  in  practising 
the  Indian  method  of  diving, — that  in  which  the  diver  carries  a 
weight  with  him,  to  facilitate  his  sinking,  and  keep  him  stead- 
ily at  the  bottom.  I  used  to  select  an  oblong-shaped  stone, 
of  sixteen  or  eighteen  pounds  weight,  but  thin  enough  to  be 
easily  held  in  one  hand ;  and  after  grasping  it  fast,  and  quit- 
ting the  rock  edge,  I  would  in  a  second  or  two  find  myself  on 
the  gray  pebble-strewed  ooze  beneath,  some  twelve  or  fifteen 
feet  from  the  surface,  where  I  found  I  could  steadily  remain, 
picking  up  any  small  objects  I  chanced  to  select,  until,  breath 
failing,  I  quitted  my  hold  of  the  stone.  And  then  two  or 
three  seconds  more  were  always  sufficient  to  bring  me  to  the 
surface  again.  There  are  many  descriptions,  in  the  works  of 
the  poets,  of  submarine  scenery,  but  it  is  always  scenery  such 
as  may  be  seen  by  an  eye  looking  down  into  the  water, — not 
by  an  eye  enveloped  in  it, — and  very  different  from  that  with 
which  I  now  became  acquainted.  I  found  that  in  these  hasty 
trips  to  the  bottom  I  could  distinguish  masses  and  colors,  but 
that  I  always  failed  to  determine  outlines.  The  minuter  ob- 
jects— pebbles,  shells,  and  the  smaller  bunches  of  sea-weed — 
always  assumed  the  circular  form ;  the  larger,  such  as  detach- 
ed rocks  and  patches  of  sand,  appeared  as  if  described  by  ir- 
regular curves.     The  dingy  gneiss  rock  rose  behind  and  over 


272  MY  SCHOOLS  AND  SCHOOLMASTEKS  ; 

me  like  a  lark  cloud,  thickly  dotted  with  minute  circular  spots 
of  soiled  white,  —  the  aspect  assumed,  as  seen  through  the 
water,  by  the  numerous  specimens  of  univalve  shells  (Purpu- 
ra lapillis  and  Patella  vulgata)  with  which  it  was  speckled  ; 
beneath,  the  irregular  floor  seemed  covered  by  a  carpet  that 
somewhat  resembled  in  the  pattern  a  piece  of  marbled  paper, 
save  that  the  circular  or  oval  patches  of  which  it  was  com- 
posed, and  which  had  as  their  nuclei,  stones,  rocks,  shell-fish, 
bunches  of  fuci,  and  fronds  of  laminaria,  were  greatly  larger. 
There  spread  around  a  misty  groundwork  of  green,  intensely 
deep  along  its  horizon,  but  comparatively  light  overhead,  in 
its  middle  sky,  which  had  always  its  prodigy, — wonderful  cir- 
clets of  light,  that  went  widening  outwards,  and  with  whose 
delicate  green  there  mingled  occasional  flashes  of  pale  crim- 
son. Such  was  the  striking  though  somewhat  meagre  scenery 
of  a  sea-bottom  in  Gairloeh,  as  seen  by  a  human  eye  sub- 
emerged  in  from  two  to  three  fathoms  of  water. 

There  still  continued  to  linger  in  this  primitive  district,  at 
'  the  time,  several  curious  arts  and  implements,  that  had  long 
become  obsolete  in  most  other  parts  of  the  Highlands,  and  of 
which  the  remains,  if  found  in  England  or  the  Low  country, 
would  have  been  regarded  by  the  antiquary  as  belonging  to 
very  remote  periods.  During  the  previous  winter  I  had  read 
a  little  work  descriptive  of  an  ancient  ship,  supposed  to  be 
Danish,  which  had  been  dug  out  of  the  silt  of  an  English  river, 
and  which,  among  other  marks  of  antiquity,  exhibited  seams 
caulked  with  moss, — a  peculiarity  which  had  set  at  fault,  it 
was  said,  the  modern  ship-carpenter,  in  the  chronology  of  his 
art,  as  he  was  unaware  there  had  ever  been  a  time  when  moss 
was  used  for  such  a  purpose.  On  visiting,  however,  a  boat- 
yard at  Gairloeh,  I  found  the  Highland  builder  engaged  in 
laying  a  layer  of  dried  moss,  steeped  in  tar,  along  one  of  his 
seams,  and  learned  that  such  had  been  the  practice  of  boat- 
carpenters  in  that  locality  from  time  immemorial.  I  have 
said  that  the  little  old  Highlander  of  the  solitary  shieling, 
whom  v  e  met  on  first  commencing  our  quarrying  labors  be- 
side his  hut,  was  engaged  in  stripping  with  a  pocket-knife 


OR,   THE   STORY  OF  MY  EDUCATION".  273 

long  slender  filaments  from  off  a  piece  of  moss-fir.  He  was 
employed  in  preparing  these  ligneous  fibres  for  the  manufac- 
ture of  a  primitive  kind  of  cordage,  in  large  use  among  the 
fishermen,  and  which  possessed  a  strength  and  flexibility  that 
could  scarce  have  been  expected  from  materials  of  such  vener- 
able age  and  rigidity  as  the  roots  and  trunks  of  ancient  trees, 
that  had  been  locked  up  in  the  peat-mosses  of  the  district  for 
mayhap  a  thousand  years.  Like  the  ordinary  cordage  of  the 
rope-maker,  it  consisted  of  three  strands,  and  was  employed 
for  haulsers,  the  cork-bauks  of  herring  nets,  and  the  lacing  of 
sails.  Most  of  the  sails  themselves  were  made,  not  of  canvass, 
but  of  a  woollen  stuff,  the  thread  of  which,  greatly  harder  and 
stouter  than  that  of  common  plaic  had  been  spun  on  the  dis- 
taff and  spindle.  As  hemp  and  flax  must  have  been  as  rare 
commodities  of  old  in  the  western  Highlands,  and  the  He- 
brides generally,  as  they  both  were  thirty  years  ago  in  Gair- 
loch,  whereas  moss-fir  must  have  been  abundant,  and  sheep, 
however  coarse  their  fleeces,  common  enough,  it  seems  not 
improbable  that  the  old  Highland  fleets  that  fought  in  the 
"  Battle  of  the  Bloody  Bay,"  or  that,  in  troublous  times,  when 
Donald  quarrelled  with  the  king,  ravaged  the  coasts  of  Arran 
and  Ayrshire,  may  have  been  equipped  with  similar  sails  and 
cordage.  Scott  describes  the  fleet  of  the  "  Lord  of  the  Isles," 
in  the  days  of  the  Bruce,  as  consisting  of  "proud  galleys," 
"  streamered  with  silk  and  tricked  with  gold."  I  suspect  he 
would  have  approved  himself  a  truer  antiquary,  though,  may- 
hap, worse  poet,  had  he  described  it  as  composed  of  very  rude 
carvels,  caulked  with  moss,  furnished  with  sails  of  dun-color- 
ed woollen  stuff*  still  redolent  of  the  oil,  and  rigged  out  with 
brown  cordage  formed  of  the  twisted  fibres  of  moss-fir.  The 
distaff*  and  spindle  was  still,  as  I  have  said,  in  extensive  use 
in  the  district.  In  a  scattered  village  in  the  neighborhood  of 
our  barrack,  in  which  all  the  adult  females  were  ceaselessly  en- 
gaged in  the  manufacture  of  yarn,  there  was  not  a  single  spile 
Ding-wheel.  Nor,  though  all  its  cottages  had  their  little  piec\ri: 
of  tillage,  did  it  boast  its  horse  or  plow.  The  cottars  turntQ- 
up  the  soil  with  the  old  Highland  implement,  the  cass  chromf 


274  MY  SCHOOLS  AND   SCHOOLMASTERS  ; 

and  the  necessary  manure  was  carried  to  the  fields  in  spring, 
and  the  produce  brought  home  in  autumn,  on  the  Lacks  of  the 
women,  in  square  wicker-work  panniers,  with  slip-bottoms. 
How  these  poor  Highland  women  did  toil !  I  have  paused 
amid  my  labors  under  the  hot  sun,  to  watch  them  as  they 
passed,  bending  under  their  load  of  peat  or  manure,  and  at 
the  same  time  twirling  the  spindle  as  they  crept  along,  and 
drawing  out  the  never-ending  thread  from  the  distaff  stuck  in 
their  girdles.  Their  appearance  in  most  cases  betrayed  their 
life  of  hardship.  I  scarce  saw  a  Gairloch  woman  of  the 
humbler  cLiss  turned  of  thirty,  who  was  not  thin,  sallow,  and 
prematurely  old.  The  men,  their  husbands  and  brothers,  were 
by  no  means  worn  out  with  hard  work.  I  have  seen  them, 
time  after  time,  sunning  themselves  on  a  mossy  bank,  wThen 
the  females  were  thus  engaged ;  and  used,  with  my  brother- 
workmen, — who  were  themselves  Celts,  but  of  the  industrious, 
hardworking  type, — to  feel  sufficiently  indignant  at  the  lazy 
fellows.  But  the  arrangement  which  gave  them  rest,  and 
their  wives  and  sisters  hard  labor,  seemed  to  be  as  much  the 
offspring  of  a  remote  age  as  the  woollen  sails  and  the  moss-fir 
cordage.  Several  other  ancient  practices  and  implements  had 
at  this  time  just  disappeared  from  the  district.  A  good  meal- 
mill  of  the  modern  construction  had  superseded,  not  a  genera- 
tion before,  several  small  mills  with  horizontal  water-wheels, 
of  that  rude  antique  type  which  first  supplanted  the  still  more 
ancient  handmill.  These  horizontal  mills  still  exist,  however, 
— at  least  they  did  so  only  two  years  ago, — in  the  gneiss  re- 
gion of  Assynt.  The  antiquary  sometimes  forgets  that,  tested 
by  his  special  rules  for  determining  periods,  several  ages  may 
be  found  contemporary  in  contiguous  districts  of  the  same 
«    country.     I  am  old  enough  to  have  seen  the  handmill  at  work 

'  in  the  north  of  Scotland ;  and  the  traveller  into  the  High 
se 

lands  of  western  Sutherland  might  have  witnessed  the  hori- 
car  • 

.  J,mtal  mill  in  action  only  two  years  ago.     But  to  the  remains 

*  f  either,  if  dug  out  of  the  mosses  or  sand-hills  of  the  southern 

Sunties,  we  would  assign  an  antiquity  of  centuries.     In  the 

c  ime  way,  the  unglazed  earthen  pipkin,  fashioned  by  the  hand 


OR,   THE   STORY  OF  MY  EDUCATION.  275 

without  the  assistance  of  the  potter's  wheel,  is  held  to  belong 
♦x>  the  '•  bronze  and  stone  periods"  of  the  antiquary  ;  and  yet 
my  friend  of  the  Doocot  Cove,  when  minister  of  Small  Isles, 
found  the  remains  of  one  of  these  pipkins  in  the  famous  char- 
nel  cave  of  Eigg,  which  belonged  to  an  age  not  earlier  than 
that  of  Mary,  and  more  probably  pertained  to  that  of  her  son 
James ;  and  I  ha\e  since  learned  that  in  the  southern  portions 
cf  the  Long  Island,  this  same  hand-moulded  pottery  of  the 
bronze  period  has  been  fashioned  for  domestic  use  during  the 
early  part  of  the  present  century.  A  chapter  devoted  to  these 
lingering,  or  only  recently  departed,  arts  of  the  primitive  ages, 
would  be  a  curious  one ;  but  I  fear  the  time  for  writing  it  is 
now  well-nigh  past,  My  few  facts  on  the  subject  may  serve 
to  show  that,  even  as  late  as  the  year  1823,  some  three  days' 
journey  into  the  Highlands  might  be  regarded  as  analagous  in 
some  respects  to  a  journey  into  the  past  of  some  three  or  four 
centuries.  But  even  since  that  comparatively  recent  period 
the  Highlands  have  greatly  changed. 

After  some  six  or  eight  weeks  of  warm  sunny  days  and 
lovely  evenings,  there  came  on  a  dreary  tract  of  rainy  weather, 
with  strong  westerly  gales ;  and  for  three  months  together, 
while  there  was  scarce  a  day  that  had  not  its  shower,  some 
days  had  half-a-dozen.  Gairloch  occupies,  as  I  have  said, 
exactly  the  focus  of  that  great  curve  of  annual  ruin  which, 
impinging  on  our  western  shores  from  the  Atlantic,  extends 
from  the  north  of  Assynt  to  the  south  of  Mull,  and  exhibits 
on  the  rain-gauge  an  average  of  thirty-five  yearly  inches, — an 
average  very  considerably  above  the  medium  quantity  that 
falls  in  any  other  part  of  Great  Britain,  save  a  small  tract  at 
the  Land's  End,  included  in  a  southern  curve  of  equal  fall. 
The  rain-fall  of  this  year,  however,  must  have  stood  very  con- 
siderably above  even  this  high  average ;  and  the  corn  crops  of 
the  poor  Highlanders  soon  began  to  testify  to  the  fact.  There 
had  been  a  larger  than  ordinary  promise  during  the  fine 
weather ;  but  in  the  darker  hollows  the  lodged  oats  and  bar" 
ley  now  lay  rotting  on  the  ground,  or,  on  the  more  exposeo" 
heights,  stood  up,  shorn  of  the  ears,  as  mere  naked  spikes  of 
13 


276 

straw.  The  potatoes,  too,  had  become  soft  and  watery,  aniJ 
must  have  formed  but  indifferent  food  to  the  poor  Highlanders ; 
condemned  even  in  better  seasons  to  feed  upon  them  during 
the  greater  part  of  the  year,  and  now  thrown  upon  them  al- 
n  >st  exclusively  by  the  failure  of  the  corn  crop.  The  cot- 
tars of  the  neighboring  village  were  on  other  accounts  in  more 
than  usually  depressed  circumstances  at  the  time.  Each 
family  paid  to  the  laird  for  its  patch  of  corn-land,  and  the 
pasturage  of  a  wide  upland  moor,  on  which  each  kept  three 
cows  a-piece,  a  small  yearly  rent  of  three  pounds.  The  males 
were  all  fishermen  as  well  as  crofters ;  and,  small  as  the  rent 
was,  they  derived  their  only  means  of  paying  it  from  the  sea, — 
chiefly,  indeed,  from  the  herring-fishery, — which,  everywhere 
an  uncertain  and  precarious  source  of  supply,  is  more  so  here 
than  in  most  other  places  on  the  north-western  coasts  of  Scot- 
land. And  as  for  three  years  together  the  herring-fishing  had 
failed  in  the  Loch,  they  had  been  unable,  term  after  term,  to 
meet  with  the  laird,  and  were  now  three  years  in  arrears.  .  For- 
tunately for  them,  he  was  a  humane,  sensible  man,  comfortable 
enough  in  his  circumstances  to  have,  what  Highland  proprietors 
often  have  not,  the  complete  command  of  his  own  affairs ;  but 
they  all  felt  that  their  cattle  were  their  own  only  by  sufferance, 
and  so  long  as  he  forbore  urging  his  claim  against  them  ;  and 
they  entertained  but  little  hope  of  ultimate  extrication.  I  saw 
among  these  poor  men  much  of  that  indolence  of  which  the 
country  has  heard  not  a  little ;  and  could  not  doubt,  from  the 
peculiar  aspects  in  which  it  presented  itself,  that  it  was,  as  I 
have  said,  a  long-derived  hereditary  indolence,  in  which  their 
fathers  and  grandfathers  had  indulged  for  centuries.  But  there 
was  certainly  little  in  their  circumstances  to  lead  to  the  forma- 
tion of  new  habits  of  industry.  Even  a  previously  industrious 
people,  were  they  to  be  located  within  the  great  north-western 
curve  of  thirty-five  inch  rain,  to  raise  corn  and  potatoes  for  the 
.  autumnal  storms  to  blast,  and  to  fish  in  the  laird's  behalf  her- 
*  rings  that  year  after  year  refused  to  come  to  be  caught,  would, 
. .  I  suspect,  in  a  short  time  get  nearly  as  indolent  as  themselves. 
slGAnd  certainly,  judging  from  the  contrast  which  my  brother 


277 

workmen  presented  to  these  Highlanders  of  the  west  coast,  the 
indolence  which  we  saw,  and  for  which  my  comrades  had  no 
tolerance  whatever,  could  scarce  be  described  as  inherently 
Celtic.  I  myself  was  the  only  genuine  Lowlander  of  our 
party.  John  Fraser,  who,  though  now  turned  of  sixty,  would 
have  laid  or  hewn  stone  for  stone  with  the  most  diligent  Saxon 
mason  in  Britain  or  elsewhere,  was  a  true  Celt  of  the  Scandina- 
vian-Gaelic variety  ;  and  all  our  other  masons, — Macdonalds, 
M'Leods,  and  Mackays,  hard-working  men,  who  were  con- 
tent to  toil  from  season  to  season,  and  all  day  long, — were  true 
Ce^ts  also.  But  they  had  been  bred  on  the  eastern  border  of 
the  Highlands,  in  a  sandstone  district,  where  they  had  the  op- 
portunity of  acquiring  a  trade,  and  of  securing  in  the  working 
season  regular  well-remunerated  employment ;  and  so  they 
had  developed  into  industrious,  skilled  mechanics,  of  at  least 
the  ordinary  efficiency.  There  are  other  things  much  more 
deeply  in  fault  as  producing  causes  of  the  indolence  of  the 
west-coast  Highlander  than  his  Celtic  blood. 

On  finishing  the  dwelling-house  upon  which  we  had  been 
engaged,  nearly  one  half  the  workmen  quitted  the  squad  for 
the  low  country,  and  the  remainder  removed  to  the  neighbor- 
hood of  the  inn  at  which  we  had  spent  our  first  night,  or 
rather  morning,  in  the  place,  to  build  a  kitchen  and  store-room 
for  the  inn-keeper.  Among  the  others,  we  lost  the  society  of 
Click-Clack,  who  had  been  a  continual  source  of  amusement 
and  annoyance  to  us  in  the  barrack  all  the  season  long.  We 
soon  found  that  he  was  regarded  by  the  Highlanders  in  our 
neighborhood  with  feelings  of  the  intensest  horror  and  dread  : 
they  had  learned  somehow  that  he  used  to  be  seen  in  the  low 
country  flitting  suspiciously  at  nights  about  churchyards,  and 
was  suspected  of  being  a  resurrectionist ;  and  not  one  of  the 
ghouls  or  vampires  of  eastern  story  could  have  been  more 
feared  or  hated  in  the  regions  which  they  were  believed  to  infest, 
than  a  resurrectionist  in  the  Western  Highlands.  Click-Clack 
had  certainly  a  trick  of  wandering  about  at  nights;  and  not 
unfrcquently  did  he  bring,  on  his  return  from  some  noctur- 
nal ramble,  dead  bodies  with  him  into  the  barrack ;  but  they 


278 

were  invariably  the  dead  bodies  of  cod,  gurnard,  and  hake, 
know  not  where  his  fishing-bank  lay,  or  what  bait  he  employ- 
ed; but  I  observed  that  almost  all  the  fish  which  he  caught 
were  ready  dried  and  salted.  Old  John  Fraser  was  not  with- 
out suspicion  that  there  were  occasional  interferences  on  the 
part  of  the  carter  with  the  integrity  of  our  meal-barrel ;  and 
I  have  seen  the  old  man  smoothing  the  surface  of  the  meal, 
just  before  quitting  the  barrack  for  his  work,  and  inscribing 
upon  it  with  his  knife-point  the  important  moral  injunction, 
"  Thou  shalt  not  steal,"  in  such  a  way  as  to  render  it  impos- 
sible to  break  the  commandment  within  the  precincts  of  the 
barrel,  without  at  the  same  time  effacing  some  of  its  charac- 
ters. And  these  once  effaced,  Click-Clack,  as  he  was  no 
writer  himself,  and  had  no  assistant  or  confidant,  could  not 
have  re-inscribed.  Ere  quitting  us  for  the  low  country,  I  bar- 
gained with  him  that  he  should  carry  my  blanket  in  his  cart 
to  Conon-side,  and  gave  him  a  shilling  and  a  dram  in  advance, 
as  pay  for  the  service.  He  carried  it,  however,  no  farther  than 
the  next  inn,  where,  pledging  it  for  a  second  shilling  and  a 
second  dram,  he  left  me  to  relieve  it  as  I  passed.  Poor  Click- 
Clack,  though  one  of  the  cleverest  of  his  class,  was  decidedly 
half-witted;  and  I  may  remark,  as  at  least  curious,  that 
though  I  have  known  idiotcy  in  its  unmixed  state  united  to 
great  honesty,  and  capable  of  disinterested  attachment,  I 
never  yet  knew  one  of  the  half-witted  cast  who  was  not  selfish 
and  a  rogue. 

We  were  unlucky  in  our  barracks  this  season.  Ere  com- 
pleting our  first  piece  of  work,  we  had  to  quit  the  hay -barn, 
our  earliest  dwelling,  to  make  way  for  the  proprietor's  hay,  and 
to  shelter  in  a  cow-house,  where,  as  the  place  had  no  chimney, 
we  were  nearly  suffocated  by  smoke ;  and  we  now  found  the 
inn-keeper,  our  new  employer,  speculating,  like  the  magistrates 
in  Joe  Miller,  on  the  practicability  of  lodging  us  in  a  building, 
the  materials  of  which  were  to  be  used  in  erecting  the  one 
which  we  were  engaged  to  build.  "We  did  our  best  to  solve 
the  problem,  by  hanging  up  at  the  end  of  the  doomed  hovel, 
—which  had  been  a  salt-store  in  its  day,  and  was  in  damp 


279 

weather  ever  sweating  salt-water, — a  hanging  partition  of  mats, 
that  somewhat  resembled  the  curtain  of  a  barn-theatre;  and, 
making  our  beds  within,  we  began  pulling  down  piecemeal,  as 
the  materials  were  required,  that  part  of  the  erection  which 
lay  outside.  We  had  very  nearly  unhoused  ourselves  ere  our 
work  was  finished  ;  and  the  chill  blasts  of  October,  especially 
when  they  blew  in  at  the  open  end  of  our  dwelling,  rendered 
it  as  uncomfortable  as  a  shallow  cave  in  an  exposed  rock-front. 
My  boyish  experiences,  however,  among  the  rocks  of  Cromarty, 
constituted  no  bad  preparation  for  such  a  life,  and  I  roughed 
it  out  at  least  as  well  as  any  of  my  comrades.  The  day  had 
so  contracted,  that  night  always  fell  upon  our  unfinished  la- 
bors, and  I  had  no  evening  walks ;  but  there  was  a  delight- 
ful gneiss  island,  of  about  thirty  acres  in  extent,  and  nearly 
two  miles  away,  to  which  I  used  to  be  occasionally  despatched 
to  quarry  lintels  and  corner  stones,  and  where  work  had  all 
the  charms  of  play  ;  and  the  quiet  Sabbaths  wTere  all  my  own. 
So  long  as  the  laird  and  his  family  were  at  the  mansion-house 
at  Flowerdale, — at  least  four  months  of  every  year, — there 
was  an  English  service  in  the  parish  church ;  but  I  had  come 
to  the  place  this  season  before  the  laird,  and  now  remained  in 
it  after  he  had  gone  away,  and  there  was  no  English  service 
for  me.  And  so  I  usually  spent  my  Sabbaths  all  alone  in  the 
noble  Flowerdale  woods,  now  bright,  under  their  dark  hill- 
sides, in  the  autumnal  tints,  and  remarkable  for  the  great 
height  and  bulk  of  their  ash  trees,  and  of  a  few  detached  firs, 
that  spoke,  in  their  venerable  massiveness,  of  former  centuries. 
The  clear,  calm  mornings,  when  the  gossamer  went  sailing  in 
long  gray  films  along  the  retired  glades  of  the  wood,  and  the 
straggling  sunlight  fell  on  the  crimson  and  orange  mushroom, 
as  it  sprang  up  amid  the  dank  grass,  and  under  thickly-leaved 
boughs  of  scarlet  and  gold,  I  deemed  peculiarly  delightful. 
Eor  one  who  had  neither  home  nor  church,  the  autumnal 
woods  formed  by  much  a  preferable  Sabbath  haunt  to  a  shal- 
low cave,  dropping  brine,  unprovided  with  chair  or  table,  and 
whose  only  furniture  consisted  of  two  rude  bedsteads  of  un- 
dressed slabs,  that  bore  atop  two  blankets  a-piece  and  a  heap 


280  MY  SCHOOLS  AND  SCHOOLMASTERS 


of  straw.  Sabbath-walking  in  parties,  and  especially  in  the 
neighborhood  of  our  large  towns,  is  always  a  frivolous,  and 
often  a  very  bad  thing  ;  but  lonely  Sabbath- walks  in  a  rural 
district, — walks  such  as  the  poet  Grahame  describes, — are  not 
necessarily  bad ;  and  the  Sabbatarians  who  urge  that  in  all 
cases,  men,  when  not  in  church  on  the  Sabbath,  ought  to  be 
in  their  dwellings,  must  know  very  little  indeed  of  the  "  huts 
where  poor  men  lie."  In  the  mason's  barrack,  or  the  farm- 
servant's  bothy,  it  is  often  impossible  to  enjoy  the  quiet  of  the 
Sabbath :  the  circumstances  necessary  to  its  enjoyment  must 
be  sought  in  the  open  air,  amid  the  recesses  of  some  thick 
wood,  or  along  the  banks  of  some  unfrequented  river,  or  on 
the  brown  wastes  of  some  solitary  moor. 

We  had  completed  ail  our  work  ere  Hallowday,  and,  after 
a  journey  of  nearly  three  days,  I  found  myself  once  more  at 
home,  with  the  leisure  of  the  long  happy  winter  before  me.  1 
still  look  back  on  the  experiences  of  this  year  with  a  feeling 
of  interest.  I  had  seen  in  my  boyhood,  in  the  interior  of 
Sutherland,  the  Highlanders  living  in  that  condition  of  com- 
parative comfort  which  they  enjoyed  from  shortly  after  the 
suppression  of  the  rebellion  of  1745,  and  the  abolition  of  the 
hereditary  jurisdictions,  till  the  beginning  of  the  present  cen- 
tury, and  in  some  localities  for  ten  or  twelve  years  later.  And 
here  again  I  saw  them  in  a  condition — the  effect  mainly  of  the 
introduction  of  the  extensive  sheep-farm  system  into  the  in- 
terior of  the  country — which  has  since  become  general  over 
almost  the  entire  Highlands,  and  of  which  the  result  may  be 
seen  in  the  annual  famines.  The  population,  formerly  spread 
pretty  equally  over  the  country,  now  exists  as  a  miserable 
selvage,  stretched  along  its  shores,  dependent  in  most  cases  on 
precarious  fisheries,  that  prove  remunerative  for  a  year  or  two, 
and  disastrous  for  mayhap  half-a-dozen.  And,  able  barely  to 
subsist  when  most  successful,  a  failure  of  the  potato  crop,  or 
in  the  expected  return  of  the  herring  shoals,  at  once  reduces 
them  to  starvation.  The  grand  difference  between  the  circum- 
stances of  the  people  of  the  Highlands  in  the  better  time  and 
the  worse,  may  be  summed  up  in  the  one  important  vocable, 


281 

— capital.  The  Highlander  was  never  wealthy  :  the  inhabit- 
ants of  a  wild  mountainous  district,  formed  of  the  primary 
rocks,  never  are.  But  he  possessed  on  the  average  his  six,  or 
eight,  or  ten  head  of  cattle,  and  his  small  flock  of  sheep  ;  and 
when,  as  sometimes  happened  in  the  high-lying  districts,  the 
corn-crop  turned  out  a  failure,  the  sale  of  a  few  cattle  or  sheep 
more  than  served  to  clear  scores  with  the  landlord,  and  enabled 
him  to  purchase  his  winter  and  spring  supply  of  meal  in  the 
Lowlands.  He  was  thus  a  capitalist,  and  possessed  the  capi- 
talist's peculiar  advantage  of  not  "living  from  hand  to  mouth," 
but  on  an  accumulated  fund,  which  always  stood  between  him 
and  absolute  want,  though  not  between  him  and  positive  hard- 
ship, and  which  enabled  him  to  rest,  during  a  year  of  scarcity, 
on  his  own  resources,  instead  of  throwing  himself  on  the  charity 
of  his  Lowland  neighbors.  Nay,  in  what  were  emphatically 
termed  "  the  dear  years"  of  the  beginning  of  the  present  and 
latter  half  of  the  past  century,  the  humble  people  of  the  Low- 
lands, especially  our  Lowland  mechanics  and  laborers,  suf- 
fered more  than  the  crofters  and  small  farmers  of  the  High- 
lands, and  this  mainly  from  the  circumstance,  that  as  the 
failure  of  the  crops  which  induced  the  scarcity  was  a  corn 
failure,  not  a  failure  of  grass  and  pasture,  the  humbler  High- 
landers had  sheep  and  cattle,  which  continued  to  supply  them 
with  food  and  raiment ;  while  the  humbler  Lowlauders,  de- 
pending on  corn  almost  exclusively,  and  accustomed  to  deal 
with  the  draper  for  their  articles  of  clothing,  were  reduced  by 
the  high  price  of  provisions  to  great  straits.  There  took  place, 
however,  about  the  beginning  of  the  century,  a  mighty  change, 
coincident  with,  and,  to  a  certain  extent,  an  effect  of,  the  wars 
of  the  first  French  Revolution.  The  price  of  provisions  rose 
in  England  and  the  Lowlands,  and,  with  the  price  of  provis- 
ions, the  rent  of  land.  The  Highland  proprietor  naturally 
enough  set  himself  to  determine  how  his  rental  also  was  to  be 
increased ;  and,  as  a  consequence  of  the  conclusion  at  which 
he  arrived,  the  sheep-farm  and  clearance-system  began.  Many 
thousand  Highlanders,  ejected  from  their  snug  holdings,  em- 
ployed their  little  capital  in  emigrating  to  Canada  and  the 


282 

States ;  and  there,  in  most  cases,  the  little  capital  increased, 
and  a  rude  plenty  continues  to  be  enjoyed  by  their  descendants. 
Many  thousands  more,  however,  fell  down  upon  the  coasts  of 
the  country,  and,  on  moss-covered  moors  or  bare  promontories, 
ill-suited  to  repay  the  labors  of  the  agriculturist,  commenced 
a  sort  of  amphibious  life  as  crofters  and  fishermen.  And,  lo- 
cated on  an  ungenial  soil,  and  prosecuting  with  but  indifferent 
skill  a  precarious  trade,  their  little  capital  dribbled  out  of  their 
hands,  and  they  became  the  poorest  of  men.  Meanwhile,  in 
some  parts  of  the  Highlands  and  Islands,  a  busy  commerce 
sprang  up,  which  employed — much  to  the  profit  of  the  land* 
lords — many  thousands  of  the  inhabitants.  The  kelp  manu- 
facture rendered  inhospitable  islets  and  tracts  of  bleak  rocky 
shore,  rich  in  sea-weed,  of  as  much  value  to  the  proprietors 
as  the  best  land  in  Scotland  ;  and  under  the  impetus  given  by 
full  employment,  and,  if  not  ample,  at  least  remunerative  pay, 
population  increased.  Suddenly,  however,  Free  Trade,  in  its 
first  approaches,  destroyed  the  trade  in  kelp  ;  and  then  the  dis- 
covery of  a  cheap  mode  of  manufacturing  soda  out  of  common 
salt  secured  its  ruin  beyond  the  power  of  legislation  to  retrieve. 
Both  the  people  and  landlords  experienced  in  the  kelp  dis- 
tricts the  evils  which  a  ruined  commerce  alway  leaves  behind 
it.  Old  Highland  families  disappeared  from  amid  the  aristoc- 
racy and  landowners  of  Scotland ;  and  the  population  of  ex- 
tensive islands  and  sea-boards  of  the  country,  from  being  no 
more  than  adequate,  suddenly  became  oppressively  redundant. 
It  required,  however,  another  drop  to  make  the  full  cup  run 
over.  The  potatoes  had  become,  as  I  have  shown,  the  staple 
food  of  the  Highlander;  and  when,  in  1846,  the  potato  blight 
came  on,  the  people,  most  of  them  previously  stripped  of  their 
little  capitals,  and  divested  of  their  employment,  were  deprived 
of  their  food,  and  ruined  at  a  blow.  The  same  stroke  which 
did  little  more  than  slightly  impinge  on  the  comforts  of  the 
people  of  the  Lowlands,  utterly  prostrated  the  Highlanders ; 
and  ever  since,  the  sufferings  of  famine  have  become  chronic  ' 
along  the  bleak  shores  and  rugged  islands  of  at  least  the  north- 
western portion  of  our  country.     Nor  is  it  perhaps  the  worst 


OE,    THE   STOEY   OF   MY   EDUCATION.  283 

part  of  the  evil  that  takes  the  form  of  clamorous  want :  so 
heavily  have  the  famines  born  on  a  class  which  were  not  ab- 
solutely the  poor  when  they  came  on,  that  they  are  absolutely 
the  poor  now ; — they  have  dissipated  the  last  remains  of  capi- 
tal possessed  by  the  people  of  the  Highlands. 


284  MY  SCHOOLS  ANT)  SCHOOLMASTERS  : 


CHAPTER    XIV 


"Edina!  Scotia's  darling  seat! 
All  hail  thy  palaces  and  towers  1" 

Burns. 

There  had  occurred  a  sad  accident  among  the  Cromarty  rocks 
this  season,  when  I  was  laboring  in  Gairloch,  which,  from 
the  circumstance  that  it  had  nearly  taken  place  in  my  own 
person  about  five  years  before,  a  good  deal  impressed  me  on 
my  return.  A  few  hundred  yards  from  the  very  bad  road 
which  I  had  assisted  old  Johnstone  of  the  Forty -Second  in 
constructing,  there  is  a  tall  inaccessible  precipice  of  ferruginous 
gneiss,  that  from  time  immemorial  down  to  this  period  had 
furnished  a  secure  nestling-place  to  a  pair  of  ravens, — the  only 
birds  of  their  species  that  frequented  the  rocks  of  the  Hill. 
Year  after  year,  regularly  as  the  breeding  season  came  round, 
the  ravens  used  to  make  their  appearance,  and  enter  on  pos- 
session of  their  hereditary  home :  they  had  done  so  for  a  hun 
dred  years  to  a  certainty, — some  said,  for  a  much  longer  time  ; 
and  as  there  existed  a  tradition  in  the  place  that  the  nest  had 
once  been  robbed  of  its  young  birds  by  a  bold  climber,  I  paid 
it  a  visit  one  morning,  in  order  to  determine  whether  I  could 
not  rob  it  too.  There  was  no  getting  up  to  it  from  below : 
the  precipice,  more  inaccessible  for  about  a  hundred  feet  from 
its  base  than  a  castle-wall,  overhung  the  shore ;  but  it  seemed 
not  impracticable  from  above ;  and,  coming  gradually  down 


OK,    THE   STORY   OF   MY   EDUCATION.  285 


upon  it,  availing  myself,  ay  T  crept  along,  of  every  little  protu- 
berance and  hollow,  I  at  length  stood  within  six  or  eight  feet 
of  the  young  birds.  From  that  point,  however,  a  smooth  shelf, 
without  projection  or  cavity,  descended  at  an  angle  of  about 
forty,  to  the  nest,  and  terminated  abruptly,  without  ledge  or 
margin,  in  the  overhanging  precipice.  Have  I  not,  I  asked, 
crept  along  a  roof  of  even  a  steeper  slope  than  that  of  the 
shelf?  Why  not,  in  like  manner,  creep  along  it  to  the  nest, 
where  there  is  firm  footing  ?  I  had  actually  stretched  out  my 
naked  foot  to  take  the  first  step,  when  I  observed,  as  the  sun 
suddenly  broke  out  from  behind  a  cloud,  that  the  light  glisten- 
ed on  the  smooth  surface.  It  was  encrusted  over  by  a  thin 
layer  of  chlorite,  slippery  as  the  mixture  of  soap  and  grease 
that  the  ship-carpenter  spreads  over  his  slips  on  the  morning 
of  a  launch.  I  at  once  saw  there  was  an  element  of  danger 
in  the  way  on  which  I  had  at  first  failed  to  calculate ;  and  so, 
relinquishing  the  attempt  as  hopeless,  I  returned  by  the  path  I 
had  come,  and  thought  no  more  of  robbing  the  raven's  nest. 
It  was,  however,  again  attempted  this  season,  but  with  tragic 
result,  by  a  young  lad  from  Sutherland  named  Mackay,  who 
had  previously  approved  his  skill  as  a  cragsman  in  his  native 
county,  and  several  times  secured  the  reward  given  by  an 
Agricultural  Society  for  the  destruction  of  young  birds  of 
prey.  As  the  incident  was  related  to  me,  he  had  approached 
the  nest  by  the  path  which  I  had  selected :  he  had  paused 
where  I  had  paused,  and  even  for  a  longer  time ;  and  then, 
venturing  forward,  he  no  sooner  committed  himself  to  the 
treacherous  chlorite,  than,  losing  footing  as  if  on  a  steep  sheet 
of  ice,  he  shot  right  over  the  precipice.  Falling  sheer  for  the 
first  fifty  feet  or  so  without  touching  the  *rock,  he  was  then 
turned  full  round  by  a  protuberance  against  which  he  had 
glanced,  and  descending  for  the  lower  half  of  the  way  head 
foremost  and  dashing  with  tremendous  force  among  the  smooth 
sea-stones  below,  his  brains  were  scattered  over  an  area  of 
from  ten  to  twelve  square  yards  in  extent.  His  only  com- 
panion— an  ignorant  Irish  lad — had  to  gather  up  the  fragments 
of  his  head  in  a  napkin. 


286 

I  now  felt  that,  save  for  the  gleam  of  the  sun  on  the  glisten- 
ing chlorite, — seen  not  a  moment  too  soon, — I  would  probably 
have  been  substituted  as  the  victim  for  poor  Mackay,  and  thai 
he,  warned  by  my  fate,  would,  in  all  likelihood,  have  escaped. 
And  though  I  knew  it  might  be  asked,  Why  the  interposition 
of  a  Providence  to  save  you,  when  he  was  left  to  perish  1  I 
did  feel  that  I  did  not  owe  my  escape  merely  to  my  acquaint- 
ance with  chlorite  and  its  properties.     For  the  full  develop- 
ment of  the  moral  instincts  of  our  nature,  one  may  lead  a  life 
by  much  too  quiet  and  too  secure :  a  sprinkling  in  one's  lot 
of  sudden  perils  and  hair-breadth  escapes  is,  I  am  convinced, 
more  wholesome,  if  positive  superstition  be  avoided,  than  a 
total  absence  of  danger.     For  my  own  part,  though  I  have,  I 
trust,  ever  believed  in  the  doctrine  of  a  particular  Providence, 
it  has  been  always  some  narrow  escape  that  has  given  me  my 
best  evidences  of  the  vitality  and  strength  of  the  belief  within. 
It  has  been  ever  the  touch  of  danger  that  has  rendered  it 
strongly  emotional.     A  few  years  after  this  time,  when  stoop- 
ing forward  to  examine  an  opening  fissure  in  a  rock  front,  at 
which  I  was  engaged  in  quarrying,  a  stone,  detached  from 
above  by  a  sudden  gust  of  wind,  brushed  so  closely  past  my 
head  as  to  beat  down  the  projecting  front  of  my  bonnet,  and 
then  dented  into  a  deep  hollow  the  sward  at  my  feet.     There 
was  nothing  that  was  not  perfectly  natural  in  the  occurrence ; 
but  the  gush  of  acknowledgment  that  burst  spontaneously  from 
my  heart  would  have  set  at  nought  the  scepticism  which  would 
have  held  that  there  was  no  Providence  in  it.     On  another 
occasion,  I  paused  for  some  time  when  examining  a  cave  of 
the  old-coast  line,  directly  under  its  low-browed  roof  of  Old 
Red  conglomerate,  as  little  aware  of  the  presence  of  danger  as 
if  I  had  been  standing  under  the  dome  of  St.  Paul's ;  but  when 
I  next  passed  the  way,  the  roof  had  fallen,  and  a  mass,  huge 
enough  to  have  given  me  at  once  death  and  burial,  cumbered 
the  spot  which  I  had  occupied.     On  yet  another  occasion,  I 
clambered  a  few  yards  down  a  precipice,  to  examine  some 
crab-apple  trees,  which,  springing  from  a  turret-like  projec- 
tion of  the  rock,  far  from  gardens  or  nurseries,  had  every 


OR,   THE   STORY  OF   MY  EDUCATION.  287 

mark  of  being  indigene  us;  and  then,  climbing  up  ameng  the 
branches,  I  shook  them  in  a  manner  that  must  have  exerted 
no  small  leverage  power  on  the  outjet  beneath,  to  possess 
myself  of  some  of  the  fruit,  as  the  native  apples  of  Scotland. 
On  my  descent  I  marked,  without  much  thinking  of  the  mat- 
ter, an  apparenl  iy  recent  crack  running  between  the  outjet  and 
the  body  of  the  precipice.  I  found,  however,  cause  enough  to 
think  of  it  on  my  return,  scarce  a  month  after ;  for  then  both 
outjet  and  trees  lay  broken  and  fractured  on  the  beach  more 
than  a  hundred  feet  below.  With  such  momentum  had  even 
the  slimmer  twigs  been  dashed  against  the  sea-pebbles,  that 
vhey  stuck  out  from  under  more  than  a  hundred  tons  of  fallen 
rock,  divested  of  the  bark  on  their  under  sides,  as  if  peeled  by 
the  hand.  And  what  I  felt  on  all  these  occasions  was,  I  be- 
lieve, not  more  in  accordance  with  the  nature  of  man  as  an  in- 
stinct of  the  moral  faculty,  than  in  agreement  with  that  provis- 
ion of  the  Divine  Government  under  which  a  sparrow  falleth 
not  without  permission.  There  perhaps  never  was  a  time  in 
which  the  doctrine  of  a  particular  Providence  was  more  ques- 
tioned and  doubted  than  in  the  present ;  and  yet  the  scepticism 
which  obtains  regarding  it  seems  to  be  very  much  a  scepticism 
of  effort,  conjured  up  by  toiling  intellects,  in  a  quiet  age,  and 
among  the  easy  classes ;  while  the  belief  which,  partially  and 
for  the  time,  it  overshadows,  lies  safely  entrenched  all  the 
while  amid  the  fastnesses  of  the  unalterable  nature  of  man. 
When  danger  comes  to  touch  it,  it  will  spring  up  in  its  old 
proportions ;  nay,  so  indigenous  is  it  to  the  human  heart,  that 
if  it  will  not  take  its  cultivated  form  as  a  belief  in  Providence, 
it  will  to  a  certainty  take  to  it  its  wild  form  as  a  belief  in  Fate 
or  Destiny.  Of  a  doctrine  so  fundamentally  important  that 
there  can  be  no  religion  without  it,  God  himself  seems  to  have 
taken  care  when  He  moulded  the  human  heart. 

The  raven  no  longer  builds  among  the  rocks  of  the  Hill  of 
Cromarty,  and  I  saw  many  years  ago  its  last  pair  of  eagles. 
This  last  noble  bird  was  a  not  unfrequent  visitor  of  the  Sutors 
early  in  the  present  century.     I  still  remember  scaring  it  from 


288 

its  perch  on  the  southern  side  of  the  hill,  as  day  was  drawing 
to  a  close,  when  the  tall  precipices  amid  which  it  had  lodged 
lay  deep  in  the*  shade ;  and  how  picturesquely  it  used  to  catch 
the  red  gleam  of  evening  on  its  plumage  of  warm  brown,  as, 
saving  outwards  over  the  calm  sea,  many  hundred  feet  below, 
it  emerged  from  under  the  shadow  of  the  cliffs  into  the 
sunshine.  Uncle  James  once  shot  a  very  large  eagle  beneath 
one  of  the  loftiest  precipices  of  the  southern  Sutor ;  and,  swim- 
ming out  through  the  surf  to  recover  its  body, — for  it  had  drop* 
ped  dead  into  the  sea, — he  kept  its  skin  for  many  years  as  a 
trophy.*  But  eagles  are  now  no  longer  to  be  seen  or  shot  on 
the  Sutors  or  their  neighborhood.  The  badger,  too, — one  of 
perhaps  the  oldest  inhabitants  of  the  country,  for  its  seems  to 
have  been  contemporary  with  the  extinct  elephants  and  hyaenas 
of  the  Pleistocene  periods, — has  become  greatly  less  common 
on  their  steeps  sides  than  in  the  days  of  my  boyhood ;  and  both 
the  fox  and  otter  are  less  frequently  seen.  It  is  not  uninterest- 
ing to  mark  with  the  eye  of  the  geologist,  how  palpably  in 
the  course  of  a  single  lifetime, — still  nearly  twenty  years 
short  of  the  term  fixed  by  the  Psalmist, — these  wild  animals 
have  been  posting  on  in  Scotland  to  that  extinction  which 
overtook,  within  its  precincts,  during  the  human  period,  the 
bear,  the  beaver,  and  the  wolf,  and  of  which  the  past  history 


*  Uncle  James  would  scarce  have  sanctioned,  had  he  been  consulted  in  the  matter, 
the  use  to  which  the  carcase  of  his  dead  eagle  was  applied.  There  lived  in  the  place 
an  eccentric,  half-witted  old  woman,  who,  for  the  small  sum  of  one  half-penny,  used 
to  fall  a  dancing  on  the  street  to  amuse  children,  and  who  rejoiced  in  the  euphonious 
though  somewhat  obscure  appellation  of  "Dribble  Drone."  Some  young  fellows,  on 
seeing  the  eagle  divested  of  its  skin,  and  looking  remarkably  clean  and  well-condi- 
tioned, suggested  that  it  should  be  sent  to  "Dribble;1'  and,  accordingly  in  the  char- 
acter of  "a  great  goose,  the  gift  of  a  gentleman,"  it  was  landed  at  the  door.  The 
gift  was  thankfully  accepted.  Dribble's  collage  proved  odoriferous  at  dinner-time 
for  the  several  following  days;  and  when  asked,  after  a  week  had  gone  by,  how  she 
had  relished  the  great  goose  which  the  gentleman  had  sent,  she  replied,  that  it  was 
"  Unco  sweet,  but  O !  tench,  teuch."  For  years  after,  the  reply  continued  to  be  pro- 
verbial in  the  place"  and  many  a  piece  of  over-hard  stock  fish,  and  over-fresh  steak, 
used  to  be  characterized  as,  "Like  Dribble  Drone's  eagle,  unco  sw-et,  but  O!  teuch, 
teuch." 


OK,   THE   STORY  OF  MY  EDUCATION.  289 

of  tht  globe,  as  inscribed  on  its  rocks,  furnishes  so  strange  a 
record 

Winter  passed  in  the  usual  pursuits ;  and  I  commenced  the 
working  season  of  a  new  year  by  assisting  my  old  master  to 
inclose  with  a  stone  wall  a  little  bit  of  ground,  which  he  had 
bought  on  speculation,  but  had  failed  in  getting  feued  out  for 
buildings.  My  services,  however,  were  gratuitous, — given 
merely  to  eke  out  the  rather  indifferent  bargain  that  the  old 
man  had  been  able  to  drive  in  his  own  behalf,  for  my  labors 
as  an  apprentice ;  and  when  our  job  was  finished,  it  became 
necessary  that  I  should  look  out  for  employment  of  a  more 
remunerative  character.  There  was  not  much  doing  in  the 
north  ;  but  work  promised  to  be  abundant  in  the  great  towns 
of  the  south:  the  disastrous  building  mania  of  1824-25  had 
just  begun ;  and,  after  some  little  hesitation,  I  resolved  on 
trying  whether  I  could  not  make  my  way  as  a  mechanic  among 
the  stone-cutters  of  Edinburgh, — perhaps  the  most  skilful  in 
their  profession  in  the  world.  I  was,  besides,  desirous  to  get 
rid  of  a  little  property  in  Leith,  which  had  cost  the  familv 
great  annoyance,  and  not  a  little  money,  but  from  which,  so 
long  as  the  nominal  proprietor  was  a  minor,  we  could  not 
shake  ourselves  loose.  It  was  a  house  on  the  Coal-hill,  or 
rather  the  self-contained  ground-floor  of  a  house,  which  had 
fallen  to  my  father  by  the  death  of  a  relative,  so  immediately 
before  his  own  death  that  he  had  not  entered  upon  possession. 
It  was  burdened  with  legacies  to  the  amount  of  nearly  two 
hundred  pounds ;  but  then  the  yearly  rent  amounted  to  twenty- 
four  pounds ;  and  my  mother,  acting  on  the  advice  of  friends, 
and  deeming  the  investment  a  good  one,  had  no  sooner  re- 
covered the  insurance-money  of  my  father's  vessel  from  the 
underwriter,  than  she  handed  the  greater  part  of  it  to  the  leg- 
atees, and  took  possession  of  the  property  in  my  behalf.  Alas ! 
never  was  there  a  more  unfortunate  inheritance  or  worse  in 
vestment.  It  had  been  let  as  a  public-house  and  tap-room, 
and  had  been  the  scene  of  a  somewhat  rough,  and,  I  dare  say, 
not  very  respectable,  hnfc  vp.t  profitable  trade ;  but  no  sooner 


290 

had  it  become  mine,  than,  in  consequence  of  some  alterations 
in  the  harbor,  the  greater  part  of  the  shipping  that  used  to 
lie  at  the  Coal-hill  removed  to  a  lower  reach :  the  tap-room 
business  suddenly  fell  off,  and  the  rent  sank,  during  the  course 
of  one  twelvemonth,  from  twenty -four  to  twelve  pounds.  And 
then,  in  its  sere  and  wintry  state,  the  unhappy  house  came  to 
be  inhabited  by  a  series  of  miserable  tenants,  who,  though 
they  sanguinely  engaged  to  pay  the  twelve  pounds,  never  paid 
them.  I  still  remember  the  brief,  curt  letters  from  our  agent, 
the  late  Mr.  Veitch,  town-clerk  of  Leith,  that  never  failed  to 
fill  my  mother  with  terror  and  dismay,  and  very  much  resem- 
bled, in  at  least  the  narrative  parts,  jottings  by  the  poet  Crabbe 
for  some  projected  poem  on  the  profligate  poor.  Two  of  our 
tenants  made  moonlight  flittings  just  on  the  eve  of  the  term ; 
and  though  the  little  furniture  which  they  left  behind  them 
was  duly  rouped  at  the  cross,  such  was  the  inevitable  expense 
of  the  transaction,  that  none  of  the  proceeds  of  the  sale  reached 
Cromarty.  The  house  wTas  next  inhabited  by  a  stout  female, 
who  kept  a  certain  description  of  lady-lodgers ;  and  for  the 
first  half-year  she  paid  the  rent  most  conscientiously  ;  but  the 
authorities  interfering,  there  was  another  house  found  for  her 
and  her  ladies  in  the  neighborhood  of  the  Calton,  and  the  rent 
of  the  second  half-year  remained  unpaid.  And  as  the  house 
lost,  in  consequence  of  her  occupation,  the  modicum  of  char- 
acter which  it  had  previously  retained,  it  lay  for  five  years 
wholly  untenanted,  save  by  a  mischievous  spirit, — the  ghost, 
it  was  said,  of  a  murdered  gentleman,  wThose  throat  had  been 
cut  in  an  inner  apartment  by  the  ladies,  and  his  body  flung  by 
night  into  the  deep  mud  of  the  harbor.  The  ghost  was,  how- 
ever, at  length  detected  by  the  police,  couching,  in  the  form  of 
one  of  the  ladies  themselves,  on  a  lair  of  straw  in  the  corner 
of  one  of  the  rooms,  and  exorcised  into  Bridewell ;  and  then 
the  house  came  to  be  inhabited  by  a  tenant  who  had  both 
the  will  and  the  ability  to  pay.  One  year's  rent,  however, 
had  to  be  expended  in  repairs ;  and  ere  the  next  year  passed, 
the  heritors  of  the  parish  were  rated  for  the  erection  of 
the  magnificent  par-eh  church  of  North  Leith,  with  its  tall 


and  graceful  spire,  then  in  course  of  building ;  and  as  we 
had  no  one  to  state  our  case,  our  house  was  rated,  not  accord- 
ing to  its  reduced,  but  according  to  its  original  value.  And 
so  the  entire  rental  of  the  second  year,  with  several  pounds 
additional  which  I  had  to  subtract  from  my  hard-earned  sav- 
ings as  a  mason,  were  appropriated  in  behalf  of  the  ecclesiastical 
Establishment  of  the  country,  by  the  builders  of  the  church 
and  spire.  I  had  attained  my  majority  when  lodging  in  the 
fragment  of  a  salt  store-house  in  Gairloch ;  and,  competent  in 
the  eye  of  the  law  to  dispose  of  the  house  on  the  Coal-hill,  I 
now  hoped  to  find,  if  not  a  purchaser,  at  least  some  one  foolish 
enough  to  take  it  off  my  hands  for  nothing.  I  have  since  heard 
and  read  a  good  deal  about  the  atrocious  landlords  of  the 
poorer  and  less  reputable  sort  of  houses  in  our  large  towns, 
and  have  seen  it  asserted  that,  being  a  bad  and  selfish  kind 
of  people,  they  ought  to  be  rigorously  dealt  with.  And  so,  I 
dare  say,  they  ought ;  but  at  the  same  time  I  cannot  forget, 
that  I  myself  was  one  of  these  atrocious  landlords  from  my 
fifth  till  nearly  my  twenty-second  year,  and  that  I  could  not 
possibly  help  it,  and  was  very  sorry  for  it. 

On  the  fourth  day  after  losing  sight  of  the  Hill  of  Cromarty, 
the  Leith  smack  in  which  I  sailed  was  slowly  threading  her 
way,  in  a  morning  of  light  airs  and  huge  broken  fog-wreaths, 
through  the  lower  tracts  of  the  Frith  of  Forth.  The  islands 
and  distant  land  looked  dim  and  gray  through  the  haze,  like 
objects  in  an  unfinished  drawing  ;  and  at  times  some  vast  low- 
browed cloud  from  the  sea  applied  the  sponge  as  it  rolled  past, 
and  blotted  out  half  a  county  at  a  time ;  but  the  sun  occa- 
sionally broke  forth  in  partial  glimpses  of  great  beauty,  and 
brought  out  in  bold  relief  little  bits  of  the  landscape, — now  a, 
town,  and  now  an  islet,  and  anon  the  blue  summit  of  a  hill. 
A  sunlit  wreath  rose  from  around  the  abrupt  and  rugged  Bass 
as  we  passed  ;  and  my  heart  leaped  within  me  as  I  saw,  for 
the  first  time,  that  stern  Patmos  of  the  devout  and  brave  of 
another  age  looming  dark  and  high  through  the  diluted  mist, 
and  enveloped  for  a  moment,  as  the  cloud  parted,  in  an  am- 
ber-dinted glory.     There  had  been  a  little  Presbyterian  oasis 


292  MY  SCHOOLS   AND   SCHOOLMASTERS; 

of  old  in  the  neighborhood  of  Cromarty,  which,  in  the  midst 
of  the  Highlands  and  Moderate  indiflferency  that  characterized 
the  greater  part  of  the  north  of  Scotland  during  the  seven- 
teenth century,  had  furnished  the  Bass  with  not  a  few  of  its 
most  devoted  victims.  Mackilligen  of  Alness,  Hogg  of  Kil- 
tearn,  and  the  Rosses  of  Tain  and  Kincardine,  had  been  in- 
carcerated in  its  dungeons ;  and,  when  laboring  in  the  Cro- 
marty quarries  in  early  spring,  I  used  to  know  that  it  was  time 
to  gather  up  my  tools  for  the  evening,  when  I  saw  the  sun 
resting  over  the  high-laying  farm  which  formed  the  patrimony 
of  another  of  its  better-known  victims, — young  Eraser  of  Brea. 
And  so  I  looked  with  a  double  interest  on  the  bold  sea-girt 
rock,  and  the  sun-gilt  cloud  that  rose  over  its  scared  forehead, 
like  that  still  brighter  halo  which  glorifies  it  in  the  memories 
of  the  Scottish  people.  Many  a  long-cherished  association 
drew  my  thoughts  to  Edinburgh.  I  was  acquainted  with  Ram- 
say, and  Fergusson,  and  the  "Humphrey  Clinker"  of  Smollett, 
and  had  read  the  description  of  the  place  in  the  "  Marmion" 
and  the  earlier  novels  of  Scott ;  and  I  was  not  yet  too  old  to  feel 
as  if  I  were  approaching  a  great  magical  city, — like  some  of 
those  in  the  "  Arabian  Nights," — that  was  even  more  intensely 
poetical  than  Nature  itself.  I  did  somewhat  chide  the  tan- 
talizing mist,  that,  like  a  capricious  showman,  now  raised  one 
corner  of  its  curtain,  and  anon  another,  and  showed  me  the 
place  at  once  very  indistinctly,  and  only  by  bits  at  a  time; 
and  yet  I  know  not  that  I  could  in  reality  have  seen  it  to 
greater  advantage,  or  after  a  mode  more  in  harmony  with  my 
previous  conceptions.  The  water  in  the  harbor  was  too  low, 
during  the  first  hour  or  two  after  our  arrival,  to  float  our  ves- 
sel, and  we  remained  tacking  in  the  roadstead,  watching  for 
the  signal  from  the  pier-head  which  was  to  intimate  to  us  when 
the  tide  had  risen  high  enough  for  our  admission ;  and  so  I 
had  sufficient  time  given  me  to  con  over  the  features  of  the 
scene,  as  presented  in  detail.  At  one  time  a  flat  reach  of  the 
New  Town  came  full  into  view,  along  which,  in  the  general 
dimness,  the  multitudinous  chimneys  stood  up  like  stacks  of 
corn  in  a  field  newly  reaped ;  at  another,  the  Castle  loomed 


293 

out  dark  in  the  cloud ;  then,  as  if  suspended  over  the  earth, 
the  rugged  summit  of  Arthur's  Seat  came  strongly  out,  while 
its  base  still  remained  invisible  in  the  wreath ;  and  anon  I 
caught  a  glimpse  of  the  distant  Pentlands,  enveloped  by  a 
clear  blue  sky,  and  lighted  up  by  the  sun.  Leith,  with  its 
thicket  of  masts,  and  its  tall  round  Tower,  lay  deep  in  shade 
in  the  foreground, — a  cold,  dingy,  ragged  town,  but  so  strongly 
relieved  against  the  pale  smoky  gray  of  the  background,  that 
it  seemed  another  little  city  of  Zoar,  entire  in  front  of  the 
burning.  And  such  was  the  strangely  picturesque  countenance 
with  which  I  was  favored  by  the  Scottish  capital,  when  form- 
ing my  earliest  acquaintance  with  it,  twenty -nine  years  ago. 

It  was  evening  ere  I  reached  it.  The  fog  of  the  early  part 
of  the  day  had  rolled  off,  and  every  object  stood  out  in  clear 
light  and  shade  under  a  bright  sunshiny  sky.  The  workmen 
of  the  place, — their  labors  just  closed  for  the  day, — were 
passing  in  groupes  along  the  streets  to  their  respective  homes ; 
but  I  was  too  much  engaged  in  looking  at  the  buildings  and 
shops,  to  look  very  discriminately  at  them ;  and  it  was  not 
without  some  surprise  that  I  found  myself  suddenly  laid  hold 
of  by  one  of  their  number,  a  slim  lad,  in  pale  moleskin  a  good 
deal  bespattered  with  paint.  My  friend  William  Ross  stood 
before  me ;  and  his  welcome  on  the  occasion  was  a  very  hearty 
one.  I  had  previously  taken  a  hasty  survey  of  my  unlucky 
house  in  Leith,  accompanied  by  a  sharp,  keen-looking,  one- 
handed  man  of  middle  age,  who  kept  the  key,  and  acted, 
under  the  town-clerk,  as  general  manager ;  and  who,  as  I 
afterwards  ascertained,  was  the  immortal  Peter  M'Craw.  But 
I  had  seen  nothing  suited  to  put  me  greatly  in  conceit  with 
my  patrimony.  It  formed  the  lowermost  floor  of  an  old  black 
building,  four  stories  in  height,  flanked  by  a  damp  narrow 
court  along  one  of  its  sides,  and  that  turned  to  the  street  its 
sharp-peaked,  many-windowed  gable.  The  lower  windows 
were  covered  up  by  dilapidated,  weather-bleached  shutters ; 
m  the  upper,  the  comparatively  fresh  appearance  of  the  rags 
that  stuffed  up  holes  where  panes  ought  to  have  been,  and  a 
few  very  pale-colored  petticoats  and  very  dark-colored  shirts 


294  MY   SCHOOLS   AND   SCHOOLMASTERS  : 

fluttering  in  the  wind,  gave  evident  signs  of  habitation.  It 
cost  my  conductor's  one  hand  an  arduous  wrench  to  lay  open 
the  lock  of  the  outer  door,  in  front  of  which  he  had  first  to 
dislodge  a  very  dingy  female,  attired  in  an  earth-colored  gown, 
that  seemed  as  if  starched  with  ashes  ;  and  as  the  rusty  hinges 
creaked,  and  the  door  fell  against  the  wall,  we  became  sensible 
of  a  damp,  unwholesome  smell,  like  the  breathing  of  a  charnel- 
house,  which  issued  from  the  interior.  The  place  had  been 
shut  up  for  nearly  two  years ;  and  so  foul  had  the  stagnant 
atmosphere  become,  that  the  candle  which  we  brought  with 
us  to  explore  burned  dim  and  yellow  like  a  miner's  lamp. 
The  floors,  broken  up  in  fifty  different  places,  were  littered 
with  rotten  straw  ;  and  in  one  of  the  corners  there  lay  a  damp 
heap,  gathered  up  like  the  lair  of  some  wild  beast,  on  which 
some  one  seemed  to  have  slept,  mayhap  months  before.  The 
partitions  were  crazed  and  tottering ;  the  walls  blackened  with 
smoke ;  broad  patches  of  plaster  had  fallen  from  the  ceilings, 
or  still  dangled  from  them,  suspended  by  single  hairs  ;  and  the 
bars  of  the  grates,  crusted  with  rust,  had  become  red  as  fox- 
tails. Mr.  M'Craw  nodded  his  head  over  the  gathered  heap  of 
straw.  "  Ah,"  he  said, — "  got  in  again,  I  see !  The  shutters 
must  be  looked  to."  "  I  dare  say."  I  remarked,  looking  dis- 
consolately around  me,  "  you  don't  find  it  very  easy  to  get 
tenants  for  houses  of  this  kind."  "  Very  easy !"  said  Mr. 
M'Craw,  with  somewhat  of  a  Highland  twang,  and,  as  I 
thought,  with  also  a  good  deal  of  Highland  hauteur, — as  was 
of  course  quite  natural  in  so  shrewd  and  extensive  a  house- 
agent,  when  dealing  with  the  owner  of  a  domicile  that  would 
not  let,  and  who  made  foolish  remarks, — "  No,  nor  easy  at 
all,  or  it  would  not  be  locked  up  in  this  way ;  but  if  we  took 
off  the  shutters,  you  would  soon  get  tenants  enough."  "  O,  I 
suppose  so ;  and  I  dare  say  it  is  as  difficult  to  sell  as  to  let  such 
houses."  "  Ay,  and  more,"  said  Mr.  M'Craw :  "  it's  all  sellers, 
and  no  buyers,  when  we  get  this  low."  '*  But  do  you  not 
think,"  I  perseveringly  asked,  "that  some  kind,  charitable 
person  might  be  found  in  the  neighborhood  disposed  to  take 
it  off  my  hands  as  a  free  gift  1     It's  terrible  to  be  married  for 


295 

life  to  a  baggage  of  a  house  like  this,  and  made  liable,  like 
other  husbands,  for  all  its  debts.  Is  there  no  way  of  get- 
ting a  divorce  V]  "  Don't  know,"  he  emphatically  replied, 
with  somewhat  of  a  nasal  snort ;  and  so  we  parted ;  and  I 
saw  or  heard  no  more  of  Peter  M'Craw  until  many  years 
after,  when  I  found  him  celebrated  in  the  well-known  song 
by  poor  Gilfillan.*  And  in  the  society  of  my  friend  I  soou 
forgot  my  miserable  house,  and  all  the  liabilities  which  !t 
entailed. 


*  Well  known  as  Gilfillan's  song  is  among  ourselves,  it  is  much  less  so  to  the 
south  of  the  Border;  and  I  present  it  to  my  English  readers  as  a  worthy  repre- 
sentative, in  these  latter  days,  of  those  ludicrous  songs  of  our  country  in  the  olden 
lime  which  are  so  admirably  suited  to  show,  notwithstanding  the  gibe  of  Gold- 
smith, 

"That  a  Scot  may  have  humor,  I  almost  said  wit." 

THE  TAX-GATHERER. 

O !  do  ye  ken  Peter,  the  taxman  an'  vriter  ? 

Ye're  weel  aff  wha  ken  naething  'bout  him  ava: 
They  ca'  him  Inspector,  or  Poor's  Rates  Collector, — 

My  faith  !  he's  weel  kent  in  Leith,  Peter  M'Craw! 
He  ca's,  and  he  comes  again,— haws,  and  he  hums  again, — 

He's  only  ae  hand,  but  it's  as  gude  as  twa ; 
He  pu's  't  out  an'  raxes,  an'  draws  in  the  taxes, 

An'  pouches  the  siller,— shame!  Peter  M'Craw! 

He'll  be  at  your  door  by  daylight  on  a  Monday, 

On  Tyesday  ye're  favored  again  wi'  a  ca' ; 
E'en  a  slee  look  he  gied  me  at  kirk  the  last  Sunday, 

Whilk  meant, — "  Jllivd  the  preachin'  an''  Peter  WCraw.* 
He  glowrs  at  my  auld  door  as  if  he  had  made  it ; 

He  keeks  through  the  key-hole  when  I  am  awa'; 
He'll  syne  read  the  auld  staue,  that  tells  a'  wha  read  it, 

To  "lilisse  God  for  aJ  giftcs,"*— but  Peter  M'Craw! 

His  sma'  papers  neatly  'ranged  a'  completely, 

That  yours,  for  a  wonder,  's  the  first  on  the  raw . 
There's  nae  jinkin'  Peler;  nae  antelope's  fleeter; 

Nao  cuttin''  acquaintance  wi'  Peter  M'Craw  ! 


*  A  devout  legend,  common  in  the  seventeenth  century  above  the  entrance  of 
houses. 


296  MY   SCHOOLS   AND  SCHOOLMASTERS: 


I  was  as  entirely  unacquainted  with  great  towns  at  this  timu 
as  the  shepherd  in  Virgil ;  and,  excited  by  what  I  saw,  I  sadly 
tasked  my  friend's  peripatetic  abilities,  and,  I  fear,  his  patience 
also,  in  taking  an  admiring  survey  of  all  the  more  characteristic 
streets,  and  then  in  setting  out  for  the  top  of  Arthur's  Seat, — 
from  which,  this  evening,  I  watched  the  sun  set  behind  the 
distant  Lomonds, — that  I  might  acquaint  myself  with  the  fea- 
tures of  the  surrounding  country,  and  the  effect  of  the  city  as 
a  whole.  And  amid  much  confused  and  imperfect  recollec- 
tion of  picturesque  groupes  of  ancient  buildings,  and  magnifi- 
cent assemblages  of  elegant  modern  ones,  I  carried  away  with 
me  two  vividly  distinct  ideas, — first,  results,  as  a  painter  might 
perhaps  say,  of  a  "fresh  eye,"  which  no  after  survey  has  served 
to  freshen  or  intensify.  I  felt  that  I  had  seen  not  one,  but  two 
cities, — a  city  of  the  past  and  a  city  of  the  present, — set  down 
side  by  side,  as  if  for  purposes  of  comparison,  with  a  pictur- 
esque valley  drawn  like  a  deep  score  between  them,  to  mark 
off  the  line  of  dvision.  And  such  in  reality  seems  to  be  the 
grand  peculiarity  of  the  Scottish  capital, — its  distinguishing 

Twasjust  Friday  e'emn',  Auld  Reekie  I'd  been  in, 

I'd  giitten  a  shillin', — I  maybe  gat  twa; 
I  thought  to  be  happy  wi'  friends  ower  a  drappie, 

When  wha  suld  come  pap  in, — but  Peter  M'Craw ! 

There's  houp  o'  a  ship  though  she's  sair  pressed  wi'  dangers, 

An'  roun'  her  frail  tirnmers  the  angry  winds  blaw  ; 
I've  aften  gat  kindness  unlooked  for  from  strangers, 

But  wha  need  houp  kindness  frae  Peter  M'Craw? 
I've  kent  a  man  pardoned  when  just  at  the  gallows, — 

I've  kent  a  chiel  honest  whase  trade  was  the  law  ! 
I've  kent  fortune's  smile  even  fa'  on  gude  fallows ; 

But  I  ne'er  kent  exceptions  wi'  Peter  M'Craw ! 

Our  toun,  yince  sae  cheerie,  is  dowie  an'  eerie ; 

Our  shippies  hae  left  us,  ">ur  trade  is  awa' ; 
There's  nae  fair  maids  strayi:  ',  nae  wee  bairnies  playm'; 

Ye've  muckle  to  answer  for,  Peter  M'Craw  ! 
But  what  gude  o'  greevin'  as  lang's  we  are  leevin', 

My  banes  I'll  soon  lay  within  yon  kirk-yard  wa' ; 
There  nae  care  shall  press  me,  nae  taxes  distress  me, 

fir  there  I'll  be  rae  thee,— Peter  M'Craw  1 


297 

trait  among  the  cities  of  the  empire  ;  though,  of  course,  during 
the  twenty -nine  years  that  have  elapsed  since  I  first  saw  it,  the 
more  ancient  of  its  two  cities, — greatly  modernized  in  many 
parts, — has  become  less  uniformly  and  consistently  antique  in 
its  aspect.  Regarded  simply  as  matters  of  taste,  I  have  found 
little  to  admire  in  the  improvements  that  have  so  materially 
changed  its  aspect.  Of  its  older  portions  I  used  never  to  tire  : 
I  found  I  could  walk  among  them  as  purely  for  the  pleasure 
which  accrued,  as  among  the  wild  and  picturesque  of  Nature 
itself;  whereas  one  visit  to  the  elegant  streets  and  ample 
squares  of  the  new  city  always  proved  sufficient  to  satisfy  ;  and 
I  certainly  never  felt  the  desire  to  return  to  any  of  them,  to 
saunter  in  quest  of  pleasure  along  the  smooth,  well-kept  pave- 
ments. I  of  course  except  Prince's  Street.  There  the  two 
cities  stand  ranged  side  by  side,  as  if  for  comparison ;  and  the 
eye  falls  on  the  features  of  a  natural  scenery  that  would  of  it- 
self be  singularly  pleasing  even  were  both  the  cities  away. 
Next  day  I  waited  on  the  town-clerk,  Mr.  Veitch,  to  see 
whether  he  could  not  suggest  to  me  some  way  in  which  I 
might  shake  myself  loose  from  my  unfortunate  property  on  the 
Coal-hill.  He  received  me  civilly, — told  me  that  the  prop- 
erty was  not  quite  so  desperate  an  investment  as  I  seemed 
to  think  it,  as  as  least  the  site,  in  which  I  had  an  interest  with 
the  other  proprietors,  was  worth  something,  and  as  the  little 
court-yard  was  exclusively  my  own  ;  and  that  he  thought  he 
could  get  the  whole  disposed  of  for  me,  if  I  was  prepared  to 
accept  of  a  small  price.  And  I  was  of  course,  as  I  told  him, 
prepared  to  accept  of  a  very  small  one.  Further,  on  learn- 
ing that  I  was  a  stone-cutter,  and  unemployed,  he  kindly  in- 
troduced  me  to  one  of  his  friends,  a  master-builder,  by  whom 
I  was  engaged  to  work  at  a  manor-house  a  few  miles  to  the 
south  of  Edinburgh.  And  procuring  "  lodgings"  in  a  small 
cottage  of  but  a  single  apartment,  near  the  village  of  Niddry 
Mill,  I  commenced  my  labors  as  a  hewer  under  the  shade  of 
the  Niddry  woods. 

There  was  a  party  of  sixteen  masons  employed  at  Niddry, 
besides  apprentices  and  laborers.     They  were  accomplished 


298 

stone-cutters, — skilful,  especially  in  the  cutting  of  mouldings, 
far  above  the  average  of  the  masons  of  the  north  country  ;  and 
it  was  with  some  little  solicitude  that  I  set  myself  to  labor 
beside  them  on  mullions,  and  tramsons,  and  labels, — for  our 
work  was  in  the  old  English  style, — a  style  in  which  I  had  no 
previous  practice.  I  was  diligent,  however,  and  kept  old  John 
Fraser's  principle  in  view  (though,  as  Nature  had  been  less 
liberal  in  imparting  the  necessary  faculties,  I  could  not  cut  so 
directly  as  he  used  to  do  on  the  required  planes  and  curves 
inclosed  in  the  stone) ;  and  I  had  the  satisfaction  of  finding, 
when  pay-night  came  round,  that  the  foreman,  who  had  fre- 
quently stood  beside  me  during  the  week,  to  observe  my  modes 
of  working,  and  the  progress  which  I  made,  estimated  my 
services  at  the  same  rate  as  he  did  those  of  the  others.  I  was 
by  and  by  entrusted,  too,  like  the  best  of  them,  with  all  the 
more  difficult  kinds  of  work  required  in  the  erection,  and  was 
at  one  time  engaged  for  six  weeks  together  in  fashioning  long, 
slim,  deeply-moulded  mullions,  not  one  of  which  broke  in  my 
hands,  though  the  stone  on  which  I  wrought  was  brittle  and 
gritty,  and  but  indifferently  suited  for  the  nicer  purposes  of 
the  architect.  I  soon  found,  however,  that  most  of  my  brother 
workmen  regarded  me  with  undisguised  hostility  and  dislike, 
and  would  have  been  better  pleased  had  1,  as  they  seemed  to 
expect,  from  the  northern  locality  in  which  I  had  been  reared, 
broke  down  in  the  trial.  I  was,  they  said,  "  a  Highlander 
newly  come  to  Scotland,"  and,  if  not  chased  northwards  again, 
would  carry  home  with  me  half  the  money  of  the  country. 
Some  of  the  builders  used  to  criticise  very  unfairly  the  work- 
manship of  the  stones  which  I  hewed :  they  could  not  lay 
them,  they  said  ;  and  the  hewers  sometimes  refused  to  assist 
me  in  carrying  in  or  turning  the  weightier  blocks  on  which  1 
wrought.  The  foreman,  however,  a  worthy,  pious  man,  a 
member  of  a  Secession  congregation,  stood  my  friend,  and 
encouraged  me  to  persevere.  "  Do  not,"  he  has  said,  "  suffer 
yourself  to  be  driven  from  the  work,  and  they  will  soon  tire 
out,  and  leave  you  to  pursue  your  own  course.  I  know  exactly 
the  nature  of  your  offence :  you  do  not  drink  with  them  or 


OR,   THE   STORY  OF  MY  EDUCATION.  299 

treat  them ;  but  they  will  soon  cease  to  expect  that  you 
should ;  and  when  once  they  find  that  you  are  not  to  be  coerced 
or  driven  off,  they  will  let  you  alone."  As,  however,  from 
the  abundance  of  employment, — a  consequence  of  the  build- 
ing mania, — the  men  were  masters  and  more  at  the  time,  the 
foreman  could  not  take  my  part  openly  in  opposition  to  them ; 
but  I  was  grateful  for  his  kindness,  and  felt  too  thoroughly  in- 
dignant at  the  mean  fellows  who  could  take  such  odds  against 
an  inoffensive  stranger,  to  be  much  in  danger  of  yielding  to 
the  combination.  It  is  only  a  weak  man  whom  the  wind  de- 
prives of  his  cloak  :  a  man  of  the  average  strength  is  more 
in  danger  of  losing  it  when  assailed  by  the  genial  beams  of 
a  too  kindly  sun. 

I  threw  myself,  as  usual,  for  the  compensatory  pleasures, 
on  my  evening  walks,  but  found  the  enclosed  state  of  the  dis- 
trict, and  the  fence  of  a  rigorously-administered  trespass-law, 
serious  drawbacks ;  and  ceased  to  wonder  that  a  thoroughly 
cultivated  country  is,  in  most  instances,  so  much  less  beloved 
by  its  people  than  a  wild  and  open  one.  Rights  of  proprie- 
torship may  exist  equally  in  both ;  but  there  is  an  important 
sense  in  which  the  open  country  belongs  to  the  proprietors 
and  to  the  people  too.  All  that  the  heart  and  the  intellect  can 
derive  from  it  may  be  alike  free  to  peasant  and  aristocrat ; 
whereas  the  cultivated  and  strictly  fenced  country  belongs 
usually,  in  every  sense,  to  only  the  proprietor ;  and  as  it  is  a 
much  simpler  and  more  obvious  matter  to  love  one's  country 
as  a  scene  of  hills,  and  streams,  and  green  fields,  amid  which 
Nature  has  often  been  enjoyed,  than  as  a  definite  locality,  in 
which  certain  laws  and  constitutional  privileges  exist,  it  is 
rather  to  be  regretted  than  wondered  at,  that  there  should  be 
cften  less  true  patriotism  in  a  country  of  just  institutions  and 
equal  laws,  whose  soil  has  been  so  exclusively  appropriated  as 
to  leave  only  the  dusty  high-roads  to  its  people,  than  in  wild 
open  countries,  in  which  the  popular  mind  and  affections  are 
left  free  to  embrace  the  soil,  but  whose  institutions  are  partial 
and  defective.  Were  our  beloved  Monarch  to  regard  such  of 
the  gentlemen  of  her  Court  as  taboo  their  Glen  Tilts,  and  shut 


300 

up  the  passes  of  the  Grampians.,  as  a  sort  of  disloyal  Destruc- 
tives of  a  peculiar  type,  who  make  it  their  vocation  to  divest 
her  people  of  their  patriotism,  and  who  virtually  teach  them 
that  a  country  no  longer  theirs  is  not  worth  the  fighting  for,  it 
might  be  very  safely  concluded  that  she  was  hut  manifesting, 
in  one  other  direction,  the  strong  good  sense  which  nas  ever 
distinguished  her.  Though  shut  out,  however,  from  the  neigh- 
boring  fields  and  policies,  the  Niddry  woods  were  open  to  me; 
and  I  have  enjoyed  many  an  agreeable  saunter  along  a  broad 
planted  belt,  with  a  grassy  path  in  the  midst,  that  form  their 
southern  boundary,  and  through  whose  long  vista  I  could  see 
the  sun  sink  over  the  picturesque  ruins  of  Craigmillar  Castle. 
A  few  peculiarities  in  the  natural  history  of  the  district  showed 
me,  that  the  two  degrees  of  latitude  which  lay  between  me 
and  the  former  scenes  of  my  studies  were  not  without  their 
influence  on  both  the  animal  and  vegetable  kingdoms.  The 
group  of  land-shells  was  different,  in  at  least  its  proportions; 
and  one  well-marked  mollusc, — the  large  tortoise-shell  helix 
(helix  aspersa),  very  abundant  in  this  neighborhood, — I  had 
never  seen  in  the  north  at  all.  I  formed,  too,  my  first  acquaint- 
ance in  this  woody,  bush-skirted  walk,  with  the  hedgehog  in  its 
wild  state, — an  animal  which  does  not  occur  to  the  north  of  the 
Moray  Frith.  I  saw,  besides,  though  the  summer  was  of  but 
the  average  warmth,  the  oak  ripening  its  acorns, — a  rare  oc- 
currence among  the  Cromarty  woods,  where,  in  at  least  nine 
out  of  every  ten  seasons,  the  fruit  merely  forms  and  then  drops 
off.  But  my  researches  this  season  lay  rather  among  fossils 
than  among  recent  plants  and  animals.  I  was  now  for  the 
first  time  located  on  the  Carboniferous  System  :  the  stone  at 
which  I  wrought  was  intercalated  among  the  working  coal- 
seams,  and  abounded  in  well-marked  impressions  of  the  more 
robust  vegetables  of  the  period, — stigmaria,  sigillaria,  cala- 
mites,  and  lepidodendra ;  and  as  they  greatly  excited  my  cu- 
riosity, I  spent  many  an  evening  hour  in  the  quarry  in  which 
they  occurred,  in  tracing  their  forms  in  the  rock  ;  or — extend- 
ing my  walks  to  the  neighboring  coal-pits — I  laid  open  with 
my  hammer,  in  quest  of  organisms,  the  blocks  of  shale  or  strap 


801 

tified  clay  raised  from  beneath  by  the  miner.  There  existed 
at  the  time  none  of  those  popular  digests  of  geological  science 
which  are  now  so  common  ;  and  so  I  had  to  grope  my  way 
without  guide  or  assistant,  and  wholly  unfurnished  with  a 
vocabulary. .  At  length,  however,  by  dint  of  patient  labor,  I 
came  to  form  not  very  erroneous,  though  of  course  inadequate, 
conceptions  of  the  ancient  Coal  Measure  Flora :  it  was  impos- 
sible to  doubt  that  its  numerous  ferns  were  really  such ;  and 
though  I  at  first  failed  to  trace  the  supposed  analogies  of  its 
lepidodendra  and  calamites,  it  was  at  least  evident  that  they 
were  the  bole-like  stems  of  great  plants,  that  had  stood  erect 
like  trees.  A  certain  amount  of  fact,  too,  once  acquired, 
enabled  me  to  assimilate  to  the  mass  little  snatches  of  infor- 
mation, derived  from  chance  paragraphs  and  occasional  articles 
in  magazines  and  reviews,  that,  save  for  my  previous  acquaint- 
ance with  the  organisms  to  which  they  referred,  would  have 
told  me  nothing.  And  so  the  vegetation  of  the  Coal  Meas- 
ures began  gradually  to  form  within  my  mind's  eye  where 
all  had  been  blank  before,  as  I  had  seen  the  spires  and  columns 
of  Edinburgh  forming  amid  the  fog,  on  the  morning  of  my 
arrival. 

I  found,  however,  one  of  the  earliest  dreams  of  my  youth 
curiously  mingling  with  my  restorations,  or  rather  forming 
their  groundwork.  I  had  read  Gulliver  at  the  proper  age  ; 
and  my  imagination  had  become  filled  with  the  littie  men  and 
women,  and  retained  strong  hold  of  at  least  one  scene  laid  in 
the  country  of  the  very  tall  men, — that  in  which  the  traveller, 
after  wandering  amid  grass  that  rose  twenty  feet  over  his  head, 
lost  himself  in  a  vast  thicket  of  barley  forty  feet  high.  I  be- 
came the  owner,  in  fancy,  of  a  colony  of  Liliputians,  that 
manned  my  eighteen-inch  canoe,  or  tilled  my  apron-breadth 
of  a  garden;  and,  coupling  with  the  men  of  Liliput  the  scene 
in  Brobdignag,  1  had  often  set  myself  to  imagine,  when  play 
ing  truant  on  the  green  slopes  of  the  Hill,  or  among  the  swamps 
of  the  u  Willows,"  how  some  of  the  vignette-like  scenes  by 
which  I  wras  surrounded,  would  have  appeared  to  creatures  so 
minute.     I  have  imagined  them  threading  their  way  through 


302  MY   SCHOOLS   AND   SCHOOLMASTEES  ; 

dark  forests  of  bracken  forty  feet  high, — or  admiring  on  the 
hill-s.de  some  enormous  club-moss  that  stretched  out  its  green 
hairy  arms  for  whole  roods, — or  arrested  at  the  edge  of  some 
dangerous  morass,  by  hedges  of  gigantic  horse-tail,  that  bore 
atop,  high  over  the  bog,  their  many-windowed,  club-like 
cones,  and  at  every  point  shot  forth  their  green  verticillate 
leaves,  huge  as  coach-wheels  divested  of  the  rim.  And  while 
I  thus  dreamed  for  my  Liliputian  companions,  I  became  for 
the  time  a  Liliputian  myself,  examined  the  minute  in  Nature 
as  if  through  a  magnifying  glass,  roamed  in  fancy  under  ferns 
that  had  shot  up  into  trees,  and  saw  the  dark  club-like  heads 
of  the  equisetacese  stand  up  over  the  spiky  branches,  some  six 
yards  or  so  above  head.  And  now,  strange  to  tell,  I  found  I 
had  just  to  fall  back  on  my  old  juvenile  imaginings,  and  to 
form  my  first  approximate  conceptions  of  the  forests  of  the 
Coal  Measures,  by  learning  to  look  at  our  ferns,  club-mosses, 
and  equisetacese,  with  the  eye  of  some  wandering  traveller  of 
Liliput  lost  amid  their  entanglements.  When  sauntering  at 
sunset  along  the  edge  of  a  wood-embosomed  stream  that  ran 
through  the  grounds,  and  beside  which  the  horse-tail  rose  thick 
and  rank  in  the  danker  hollows,  and  the  bracken  shot  out  its 
fronds  from  the  drier  banks,  I  had  to  sink  in  fancy,  as  of  old, 
into  a  manakin  of  a  few  inches,  and  to  see  intertropical  jungles 
in  the  tangled  grasses  and  thickly-interlaced  equisetaceaj,  and 
tall  trees  in  the  brake  and  the  lady-fern.  But  many  a  want- 
ing feature  had  to  be  supplied,  and  many  an  existing  one 
altered.  Amid  forests  of  arboraceous  ferns,  and  of  horse-tails 
tall  as  the  masts  of  pinnaces,  there  stood  up  gigantic  club- 
mosses,  thicker  than  the  body  of  a  man,  and  from  sixty  to 
eighty  feet  in  height,  that  mingled  their  foliage  with  strange 
monsters  of  the  vegetable  world,  of  types  no  longer  recognis- 
able among  the  existing  forms, — sculptured  ullodendra,  bear- 
ing rectilinear  stripes  of  sessile  cones  along  their  sides, — and 
ornately  tatooed  sigilaria,  fluted  like  columns,  and  with  vertical 
rows  of  leaves  bristling  over  their  stems  and  larger  branches. 
Such  were  some  of  the  dreams  in  which  I  began  at  this  period 
for  the  first  time  to  indulge ;  nor  have  they,  like  the  other 


303 

dreams  of  youth,  passed  away.  The  aged  poet  has  not  unfre- 
quently  to  complain,  that  as  he  rises  in  years,  his  "  visions 
float  less  palpably  before  him."  Those,  on  the  contrary,  which 
science  conjures  up,  grow  in  distinctness,  as,  in  the  process  of 
slow  acquirement,  form  after  form  is  evoked  from  out  the 
obscurity  of  the  past,  and  one  restoration  is  added  to  another. 
There  were  at  this  time  several  collier  villages  in  the  neigh- 
borhood of  Edinburgh,  which  have  since  disappeared.  They 
were  situated  on  what  were  called  the  "edge-coals," — thos 
steep  seams  of  the  Mid-Lothian  Coal  Basin,  which,  lying  low 
in  the  system,  have  got  a  more  vertical  tilt  against  the  trap 
eminences  of  the  south  and  west  than  the  upper  scams  in  the 
middle  of  the  field,  and  which,  as  they  could  not  be  followed 
in  their  abrupt  descent  beyond  a  certain  depth,  are  now  re- 
garded, for  at  least  the  practical  purposes  of  the  miner,  and 
until  the  value  of  coal  shall  have  risen  considerably,  as  wrought 
out.  One  of  these  villages,  whose  foundations  can  no  longer 
be  traced,  occurred  in  the  immediate  vicinity  of  Niddry  Mill. 
It  was  a  wretched  assemblage  of  dingy,  low-roofed,  tile-cover- 
ed hovels,  each  of  which  perfectly  resembled  all  the  others, 
and  was  inhabited  by  a  rude  and  ignorant  race  of  men,  that 
still  bore  about  them  the  soil  and  stain  of  recent  slavery. 
Curious  as  the  fact  may  seem,  all  the  older  men  of  that  village, 
though  situated  little  more  than  four  miles  from  Edinburgh, 
had  been  born  slaves.  Nay,  eighteen  years  later  (in  1842), 
when  Parliament  issued  a  commission  to  inquire  into  the  na- 
ture and  results  of  female  labor  in  the  coal-pits  of  Scotland, 
there  was  a  collier  still  living  that  had  never  been  twenty 
miles  from  the  Scottish  capital,  who  could  state  to  the  Com- 
missioners that  both  his  father  and  grandfather  had  been 
slaves, — that  he  himself  had  been  born  a  slave, — and  that  he 
had  wrought  for  years  in  a  pit  in  the  neighborhood  of  Mus- 
selburgh ere  the  colliers  got  their  freedom.  Father  and  grand 
father  had  been  parishioners  of  the  late  Dr.  Carlyle  of  Invcr- 
esk.  They  were  contemporary  with  Chatham  and  Cowper, 
and  Burke  and  Fox;  and  at  a  time  when  Granville  Sharpe 
could  have  stepped  forward  and  effectually  protected,  in  vir- 


304  MY  SCHOOLS  AND  SCHOOLMASTERS  ; 

tue  of  his  own  statute,  the  runaway  negro  who  had  taken  ref- 
uge from  the  tyranny  of  his  master  in  a  British  port,  no  man 
could  have  protected  them  from  the  Inveresk  laird,  their  pro- 
prietor, had  they  dared  to  exercise  the  right,  common  to  all 
Britons  besides,  of  removing  to  some  other  locality,  or  of 
making  choice  of  some  other  employment.  Strange  enough, 
surely,  that  so  entire  a  fragment  of  the  barbarous  past  should 
have  been  thus  dovetailed  into  the  age  not  yet  wholly  passed 
away  !  I  regard  it  as  one  of  the  more  singular  circumstances 
of  my  life,  that  I  should  have  conversed  with  Scotchmen  who 
had  been  born  slaves.  The  collier  women  of  this  village, — 
poor  over-toiled  creatures,  who  carried  up  all  the  coal  from 
under  ground  on  their  backs,  by  a  long  turnpike  stair  inserted 
in  one  of  the  shafts, — bore  more  of  the  marks  of  serfdom  still 
about  them  than  even  the  men.  How  these  poor  women  did 
labor,  and  how  thoroughly,  even  at  this  time,  were  they  cha- 
racterized by  the  slave-nature !  It  has  been  estimated  by  a 
man  who  knew  well  them, — Mr.  Eobert  Bald, — that  one  of 
their  ordinary  day's  work  was  equal  to  the  carrying  of  a  hun- 
dredweight from  the  level  of  the  sea  to  the  top  of  Ben  Lo- 
mond. They  were  marked  by  a  peculiar  type  of  mouth,  from 
which  I  learned  to  distinguish  them  from  all  the  other  females 
of  the  country.  It  was  wide,  open,  thick-lipped,  projecting 
equally  above  and  below,  and  exactly  resembled  that  which 
we  find  in  the  prints  given  of  savages  in  their  lowest  and  most 
degraded  state,  in  such  narratives  of  our  modern  voyagers  as, 
for  instance,  the  "  Narrative  of  Captain  Fitzroy's  Second  Voy- 
age of  the  Beagle."  During,  however,  the  lapse  of  the  last 
twenty  years  this  type  of  mouth  seems  to  have  disappeared  in 
Scotland.  It  was  accompanied  by  traits  of  almost  infantile 
weakness.  I  have  seen  these  collier  women  crying  like  chil- 
dren, when  toiling  under  their  load  along  the  upper  rounds 
of  the  wooden  stair  that  traversed  the  shaft ;  and  then  re- 
turning, scarce  a  minute  after,  with  the  empty  creer,  singing 
with  glee.  The  collier  houses  were  chiefly  remarkable  for 
being  all  alike,  outside  and  in :  all  were  equally  dingy,  dirty, 
Vaked,  and  uncomfortable.     I  first  learned  to  suspect,  in  this 


OK.    THE   STORY   OF   MY   EDUCATION.  305 

rude  village,  that  the  democratic  watchword,  "  Liberty  and 
Equality,"  is  somewhat  faulty  in  its  philosophy.  Slavery  and 
Eq  lality  would  be  nearer  the  mark.  Wherever  there  is 
liberty,  the  original  differences  between  man  and  man  begin 
to  manifest  themselves  in  their  external  circumstances,  and 
the  equality  straightway  ceases.  It  is  through  slavery  that 
equality,  among  at  least  the  masses,  is  to  be  fully  attained.* 

I  found  but  little  intelligence  in  the  neighborhood,  among 
even  the  villagers  and  country  people,  that  stood  on  a  higher 
platform  than  the  colliers.  The  fact  may  be  variously  ac- 
counted for ;  but  so  it  is,  that  though  there  is  almost  always 
more  than  the  average  amount  of  knowledge  and  acquirement 
amongst  the  mechanics  of  large  towns,  the  little  hamlets  and 
villages  by  which  they  are  surrounded  are  usually  inhabited 
by  a  class  considerably  below  the  average.  In  M.  Quete- 
let's  interesting  "  Treatise  on  Man,"  we  find  a  series  of  maps 


*  The  act  for  manumitting  our  Scotch  colliers  was  passed  in  the  year  1775,  forly- 
aine  years  prior  to  the  date  of  my  acquaintance  with  the  class  at  Niddry.  But 
though  it  was  only  such  colliers  of  the  village  aa  were  in  their  fiftieth  year  when  I 
knew  them  (with,  of  course,  all  the  older  ones),  who  had  been  born  slaves,  even  its 
men  of  thirty  had  actually,  though  not  nominally,  come  into  the  world  in  a  state  of 
bondage,  in  consequence  of  certain  penalties  attached  to  the  emancipating  act,  of 
which  the  poor  ignorant  workers  under  ground  were  both  too  improvident  and  too 
little  ingenious  to  keep  clear.  They  were  set  free,  however,  by  a  second  act  passed 
in  1799.  The  language  of  both  these  acts,  regarded  as  British  ones  of  the  latter  half 
of  the  last  century,  and  a3  bearing  reference  to  British  subjects  living  within  the 
limits  of  the  island,  strikes  with  startling  effect.  "  Whereas,"  says  the  preamble  of 
the  older  act— that  of  1775— "by  the  statute  law  of  Scotland,  as  explained  by  the 
judges  of  the  courts  of  law  there,  many  colliers,  and  coal-bearers,  and  sailers,  are  in 
a  state  of  slavery  or  bondage,  bound  to  the  collieries  or  salt-works  where  they  w?rk 
for  life,  transferable  with  the  collieries  and  salt-works  ;  and  whereas  the  emancipat- 
ing." &c.  &c.  A  passage  in  the  preamble  of  the  act  of  1799  is  scarce  less  striking  • 
it  declares  that,  notwithstanding  the  former  act,  "many  colliers  and  coal-bearers 
alill  continue  in  a  state  of  bondage''''  in  Scotland.  The  history  of  our  Scotch  colliers 
vuild  be  found  a  curious  and  instructive  one.  Their  slavery  seems  not  to  have 
been  derived  from  the  ancient  times  of  general  s»  rfship,  but  to  have  originated  in 
comparatively  modern  acts  of  the  Scottish  Parliament,  and  in  decisions  of  the  Court 
of  Sessions,— acts  of  a  Parliament  in  which  the  poor  ignorant  subterranean  men  of 
the  country  were,  of  course,  wholly  unrepresented,  and  in  decisions  of  a  Court  U» 
which  no  agent  of  theirs  ever  made  appearance  in  their  behalf. 


306  MY  SCHOOLS  AND  SCHOOLMASTERS; 

given,  which,  based  on  extensive  statistical  tables,  exhibit 
by  darker  and  lighter  shadings  the  moral  and  intellectual 
character  of  the  people  in  the  various  districts  of  the  coun- 
tries which  they  represent.  In  one  map,  for  instance,  repre- 
sentative of  the  state  of  education  in  France,  while  certain 
well-taught  provinces  are  represented  by  a  bright  tint,  as  if 
enjoying  the  light,  there  are  others,  in  which  great  ignorance 
obtains,  that  exhibit  a  deep  shade  of  blackness,  as  if  a  cloud 
rested  over  them  ;  and  the  general  aspect  of  the  whole  is  that 
of  a  landscape  seen  from  a  hill-top  in  a  day  of  dappled  light 
and  shadow.  There  are  certain  minuter  shadings,  however,  by 
which  certain  curious  facts  might  be  strikingly  represented  to 
the  eye  in  this  manner,  for  which  statistical  tables  furnish  no 
adequate  basis,  but  which  men  who  have  seen  a  good  deal  of 
the  people  of  a  country  might  be  able  to  give  in  a  manner  at 
least  approximately  correct.  In  a  shaded  map  representative 
of  the  intelligence  of  Scotland,  I  would  be  disposed — sinking 
the  lapsed  classes,  or  representing  them  merely  by  a  few  such 
dark  spots  as  mottle  the  sun — to  represent  the  large  towns  as 
centres  of  focal  brightness  ;  but  each  of  these  focal  centres  I 
would  encircle  with  a  halo  of  darkness  considerably  deeper  in 
shade  than  the  medium  spaces  beyond.  I  found  that  in  the 
tenebrious  halo  of  the  Scottish  capital  there  existed,  indepen- 
dently of  the  ignorance  of  the  poor  colliers,  three  distinct  ele- 
ments. A  considerable  proportion  of  the  villagers  were  farm- 
servants  in  the  decline  of  life,  who,  unable  any  longer  to  pro- 
cure, as  in  their  days  of  unbroken  strength,  regular  engage 
ments  from  the  farmers  of  the  district,  supported  themselves  as 
occasional  laborers.  And  they,  of  course,  were  characterized 
by  the  ignorance  of  their  class.  Another  portion  of  the  people 
were  carters, — employed  mainly,  in  these  times,  ere  the  rail- 
ways began,  in  supplying  the  Edinburgh  coal-market,  and  in 
driving  building  materials  into  the  city  from  the  various  quar- 
ries. And  carters  as  a  class,  like  all  who  live  much  in  the  society 
of  horses,  are  invariably  ignorant  and  unintellectual.  A  third, 
but  greatly  smaller  portion  than  either  of  the  other  two,  con- 
sisted of  mechanics ;  but  it  was  only  mechanics  of  an  inferior 


OR,   THE   STORY   OF  MY  EDUCATION.  307 

order,  that  remained  outside  the  city  to  work  for  carters  and 
laborers :  the  better  skilled,  and,  as  to  a  certain  extent  the 
terms  are  convertible,  the  more  intelligent  mechanics,  found 
employment  and  a  home  in  Edinburgh.  The  cottage  in  which 
I  lodged  was  inhabited  by  an  old  farm-servant, — a  tall,  large- 
bodied,  small-headed  man,  who,  in  his  journey  through  life, 
seemed  to  have  picked  up  scarce  an  idea;  and  his  wife,  a 
woman  turned  of  sixty,  though  a  fine  enough  body  in  the  main, 
and  a  careful  manager,  was  not  more  intellectual.  They  had 
but  a  single  apartment  in  their  humble  dwelling,  fenced  oft'  by 
a  little  bit  of  partition  from  the  outer  door ;  and  I  could  fun 
have  wished  that  they  had  two ;  but  there  was  no  choice  of 
lodgings  in  the  village,  and  I  had  just  to  content  myself,  as  the 
working  man  always  must  in  such  circumstances,  with  the 
shelter  I  could  get.  My  bed  wTas  situated  in  the  one  end  of 
the  room,  and  my  landlady's  and  her  husband's  in  the  other, 
with  the  passage  by  which  we  entered  between ;  but  decent 
old  Peggy  Russel  had  been  accustomed  to  such  arrangements 
all  her  life  long,  and  seemed  never  once  to  think  of  the  matter ; 
and — as  she  had  reached  that  period  of  life  at  which  women 
of  the  humbler  class  assume  the  characteristics  of  the  other  sex, 
somewhat,  I  suppose,  on  the  principle  on  which  very  ancient 
female  birds  put  on  male  plumage — I  in  a  short  time  ceased  to 
think  of  it  also.  It  is  not  the  less  true,  however,  that  the  pur- 
poses of  decency  demand  that  much  should  be  done,  especially 
in  the  southern  and  midland  districts  of  Scotland,  for  the 
dwellings  of  the  poor. 


308  MY  SCHOOLS  AND    SCHOOLMASTERS 


CHAPTER  XV 


"See  Inebriety,  her  wand  she  waves, 
And  lo !   her  pale,  and  lo !   her  purple  slavea." 

Crabbk. 

I  was  joi.^d  in  the  course  of  a  few  weeks,  in  Peggy  Russel's 
one-roomed  cottage,  by  another  lodger, — lodgers  of  the  hum- 
bler class  usually  consociating  together  in  pairs.  My  new 
companion  had  lived  for  some  time,  ere  my  arrival  at  Niddry, 
in  a  neighboring  domicile,  which,  as  he  was  what  was  termed 
a  "quiet  living  man,"  and  as  the  inmates  were  turbulent  and 
unsteady,  he  had,  after  bearing  a  good  deal,  been  compelled 
to  quit.  Like  our  foreman,  he  was  a  strict  Seceder,  in  full 
communion  with  his  Church.  Though  merely  a  common  la- 
borer, with  not  more  than  half  the  wages  of  our  skilled  work- 
men, I  had  observed,  ere  our  acquaintance  began,  that  no 
mason  in  the  squad  was  more  comfortably  attired  on  week- 
days than  he,  or  wore  a  better  suit  on  Sunday ;  and  so  I  had 
set  him  down,  from  the  circumstance,  as  a  decent  man.  I 
now  found  that,  like  my  uncle  Sandy,  he  was  a  great  reader 
of  good  books, — an  admirer  even  of  the  same  old  authors,-  — 
deeply  read,  like  him.  in  Durham  and  Rutherford, — and  en- 
tertaining, too,  a  high  respect  for  Baxter,  Boston,  old  John 
Brown,  and  the  Erskines.  In  one  respect,  however,  he  dif- 
fered from  both  my  uncles :  he  had  begun  to  question  the 
excellence  of  religious  Establishments ;  nay,  to  hold  that  the 
country  might  be  none  the  worse  were  its  ecclesiastical  en- 


OTi,   THE   STORY  OF   MY    EDUCATION.  309 

dowmcnts  taken  away, — a  view  which  our  foreman  a.so  en- 
tertained ;  whereas  both  Uncles  Sandy  and  James  were  as  little 
averse  as  the  old  divines  themselves  to  a  Sta^e-paid  ministry, 
and  desiderated  only  that  it  should  be  a  good  one.  There 
were  two  other  Sececlers  engaged  as  masons  at  the  work, — 
more  of  the  polemical  and  less  of  the  devout  type  than  the 
foreman  or  my  new  comrade  the  laborer ;  and  they  also  used 
occasionally  to  speak,  not  merely  of  the  doubtful  usefulness, 
but  as  they  were  stronger  in  their  language  than  their  more 
self-denying  and  more  consistent  co-religionists — of  the  posi- 
tive worthlessness,  of  Establishments.  The  Voluntary  con- 
troversy did  not  break  out  until  about  nine  years  after  this 
time,  when  the  Reform  Bill  gave  vent  to  many  a  pent-up 
opinion  and  humor  among  that  class  to  which  it  extended  the 
franchise ;  but  the  materials  of  the  war  were  evidently  already 
accumulating  among  the  intelligent  Dissenters  of  Scotland ; 
and  from  what  I  now  saw,  its  after  appearance  in  a  some- 
what formidable  aspect  failed  to  take  me  by  surprise.  I  must 
in  justice  add,  that  all  the  religion  of  our  party  was  to  be 
found  among  its  Seceders.  Our  other  workmen  were  really 
wild  fellows,  most  of  whom  never  entered  a  church.  A  de- 
cided reaction  had  already  commenced  within  the  Establish- 
ment, on  the  cold,  elegant,  unpopular  Moderatism  of  the  pre- 
vious period, — that  Moderatism  which  had  been  so  adequately 
represented  in  the  Scottish  capital  by  the  theology  of  Blair 
and  the  ecclesiastical  policy  of  Robertson ;  but  it  was  chiefly 
among  the  middle  and  upper  classes  that  the  re-action  had 
begun  ;  and  scarce  any  portion  of  the  humbler  people,  lost  to 
the  Church  during  the  course  of  the  two  preceding  genera- 
tions, had  yet  been  recovered.  And  so  the  working  men  of 
Edinburgh  and  its  neighborhood,  at  this  time,  were  in  large 
part  either  non-religious,  or  included  within  the  Independent 
or  Secession  pale. 

John  Wilson — for  such  was  the  name  of  my  new  comrade — 
was  a  truly  good  man, — devout,  conscientious,  friendly, — not 
highly  intellectual,  but  a  person  of  jjlain  good  sense,  and  by 
no  means  devoid  of  general  information.     There  was  another 


310  MY  SCHOOLS   AND  SCHOOLMASTERS; 

laborer  at  the  work,  an  unhappy  little  man,  with  whom  J 
have  often  seen  John  engaged  in  mixing  mortar,  or  carrying 
materials  to  the  builders,  but  never  without  being  struck  by  the 
contrast  which  they  presented  in  character  and  appearance. 
John  was  a  plain,  somewhat  rustic-looking  personage;  and 
an  injury  which  he  had  received  from  gunpowder  in  a  quarry, 
that  had  destroyed  the  sight  of  one  of  his  eyes,  and  consider- 
ably dimmed  that  of  the  other,  had,  of  course,  not  served  tc 
improve  his  looks  ;  but  he  always  wore  a  cheerful,  contented 
air ;  and,  with  all  his  homeliness,  was  a  person  pleasant  to 
the  sight.  His  companion  was  a  really  handsome  man, — • 
gray-haired,  silvery-whiskered,  with  an  aristocratic  cast  of 
countenance,  that  would  have  done  no  discredit  to  a  royal 
drawing-room,  and  an  erect  though  somewhat  petit  figure, 
cast  in  a  mould  that,  if  set  off  more  to  advantage,  would  have 
been  recognized  as  elegant.  But  John  Lindsay — for  so  he 
was  called — bore  always  the  stamp  of  misery  on  his  striking 
features.  There  lay  between  the  poor  little  man  and  the 
Crawford  peerage  only  a  narrow  chasm,  represented  by  a  miss- 
ing marriage  certificate ;  but  he  was  never  able  to  bridge  the 
gulf  across ;  and  he  had  to  toil  on  in  unhappiness,  in  conse- 
quence, as  a  mason's  laborer.  I  have  heard  the  call  resound- 
ing from  the  walls  twenty  times  a-day, — "  John,  Yearl  Cra- 
furd,  bring  us  anither  hod  o'  lime." 

I  found  religion  occupying  a  much  humbler  place  among 
these  workmen  of  the  south  of  Scotland  than  that  which  I  had 
used  to  see  assigned  to  it  in  the  north.  In  my  native  district 
and  the  neighboring  counties  it  still  spoke  with  authority ; 
and  a  man  who  stood  up  in  its  behalf  in  any  society,  unless 
very  foolish  or  very  inconsistent,  always  succeeded  in  silencing 
opposition,  and  making  good  its  claims.  Here,  however,  the 
irreligious  asserted  their  power  as  the  majority,  and  carried 
matters  with  a  high  hand ;  and  religion  itself,  existing  as  but 
dissent,  not  as  an  establishment,  had  to  content  itself  with  bare 
toleration.  Remonstrance,  or  even  advice,  was  not  permitted. 
"Johnnie,  boy,"  I  have  heard  one  of  the  rougher  mechanics 
say,  half  in  jest,  half  in  earnest,  to  my  companion,  "if  you  set 


311 

yourself  to  convert  me,  I'll  brak  your  face  ;"  and  I  have  known 
another  of  them  remark,  with  a  patronizing  air,  that  "  kirks 
were  nae  very  bad  things,  after  a' ;"  that  he  "  aye  liked  to  be 
in  a  kirk,  for  the  sake  of  decency,  once  a  twelvemonth ;"  and 
that,  as  he  "  hadna  been  kirked  for  the  last  ten  months,  he 
was  just  only  waiting  for  a  rainy  Sabbath  to  lay  in  his  stock 
o'  divinity  for  the  year."  Our  new  lodger,  aware  how  little 
any  interference  with  the  religious  concerns  of  others  was 
tolerated  h  the  place,  seemed  unable  for  some  time  to  muster 
up  resolution  enough  to  broach  in  the  family  his  favorite 
subject.  He  retired  every  night,  before  going  to  bed,  to  his 
rloset, — the  blue  vault,  with  all  its  stars, — often  the  only  closet 
of  the  devout  lodger  in  a  south-country  cottage ;  but  I  saw 
that  each  evening,  ere  he  went  out,  he  used  to  look  uneasily 
at  the  landlord  and  me,  as  if  there  lay  some  weight  on  his 
mmd  regarding  us,  of  which  he  was  afraid  to  rid  himself,  and 
which  yet  rendered  him  very  uncomfortable.  "  Well,  John," 
I  asked  one  evening,  speaking  direct,  to  his  evident  embar- 
rassment ;  "  what  is  it  ?"  John  looked  at  old  William  the 
landlord,  and  then  at  me.  "  Did  we  not  think  it  right,"  he 
said,  "that  there  should  be  evening  worship  in  the  family'?" 
Old  William  had  not  idea  enough  for  conversation  :  he  either 
signified  acquiescence  in  whatever  was  said  that  pleased  him, 
by  an  ever-recurring  ay,  ay,  ay  ;  or  he  grumbled  out  his  dissent 
in  a  few  explosive  sounds,  that  conveyed  his  meaning  rather 
in  their  character  as  tones  than  as  vocables.  But  there  now 
mingled  with  the  ordinary  explosions  the  distinct  enunciation, 
given  with,  for  him,  unwonted  emphasis,  that  he  "  wasna  for 
that."  I  struck  in,  however,  on  the  other  side,  and  appealed 
to  t*eggy.  "  I  was  sure,"  I  said,  'v  that  Mrs.  Russel  would  see 
tru-.  propriety  of  John's  proposal."  And  Mrs.  Russel,  as  most 
women  would  have  done  in  the  circumstances,  unless,  indeed, 
very  bad  ones,  did  see  the  propriety  of  it ;  and  from  that 
evening  forward  the  cottage  had  its  family  worship.  John's 
prayers  were  always  very  earnest  and  excellent,  but  sometimes 
just  a  little  too  long;  and  old  William,  who,  I  fear,  did  not 
g.-eatly  profit  by  them,  used  not  unfrequently  to  fall  asleep  on 


312 

his  knees.  But  though  he  sometimes  stole  tc  his  bed  when 
John  chanced  to  be  a  little  later  in  taking  the  book  than  usual, 
and  got  into  a  profound  slumber  ere  the  prayer  began,  he  de- 
ferred to  the  majoi  ty,  and  gave  us  no  active  opposition.  He 
was  not  a  vicious  man :  his  intellect  had  slept  through  life, 
and  he  had  as  little  religion  as  an  old  horse  or  dog ;  but  he 
was  quiet  and  honest,  and,  to  the  measure  of  his  failing  ability, 
i  faithful  worker  in  his  humble  employments.  His  religious 
raining,  like  that  of  his  brother  villagers,  seemed  to  have  been 
sadly  neglected.  Had  he  gone  to  the  parish  church  on  Sun- 
day, he  would  have  heard  a  respectable  moral  essay  read  from 
the  pulpit,  and  would,  of  course,  have  slept  under  it ;  but 
William,  like  most  of  his  neighbors,  preferred  sleeping  out 
the  day  at  home,  and  never  did  go  to  the  church ;  and  as  cer- 
tainly as  he  went  not  to  the  teacher  of  religion,  the  teacher  of 
religion  never  came  to  him.  During  the  ten  months  which  I 
spent  in  the  neighborhood  of  Niddry  Mill,  I  saw  neither 
minister  nor  missionary.  But  if  the  village  furnished  no  ad- 
vantageous ground  on  which  to  fight  the  battle  of  religious 
Establishments, — seeing  that  the  Establishment  was  of  no 
manner  of  use  there, — it  furnished  ground  quite  as  unsuitable 
for  the  class  of  Voluntaries  who  hold  that  the  supply  of  relig- 
ious instruction  should,  as  in  the  case  of  all  other  commodi- 
ties, be  regulated  by  the  demand.  Demand  and  supply  were 
admirably  well  balanced  in  the  village  of  Niddry  :  there  was 
no  religious  instruction,  and  no  wish  or  desire  for  it. 

The  masons  at  Niddry  House  were  paid  fortnightly,  on  a 
Saturday  night.  Wages  were  high, — we  received  two  pounds 
eight  shillings  for  our  two  weeks'  work;  but  scarce  half-a-dozen 
in  the  squad  could  claim  at  settlement  the  full  tale,  as  the 
Monday  and  Tuesday  after  pay-night  were  usually  blanK  days, 
devoted  by  two-thirds  of  the  whole  to  drinking  and  debauchery. 
Not  often  has  wages  been  more  sadly  misspent  than  by  my 
poor  work-fellows  at  Niddry,  during  this  period  of  abundant 
and  largely-remunerated  employment.  On  receiving  their 
money,  they  set  straightway  oft"  for  Edinburgh,  in  parties  of 
threes  and  fours ;  and  until  the  evening  of  the  following  Mon- 


OR,    THE    STORY  OF  MY   EDUCATION.  313 

day  or  Tuesday  I  saw  no  more  of  them.  They  would  then 
come  dropping  in,  pale,  dirty,  disconsolate-looking, — almost  al- 
ways in  the  re-actionary  state  of  unhappiness  which  succeeds 
intoxication — (they  themselves  used  to  term  it  "  the  horrors") 
— and  with  their  nervous  system  so  shaken,  that  rarely  until 
a  day  or  two  after  did  they  recover  their  ordinary  working 
ability.  Narratives  of  their  adventures,  however,  would  then 
begin  to  circulate  through  the  squad, — adventures  commonly 
of  the  "  Tom  and  Jerry"  type ;  and  always,  the  more  extrav- 
agant they  were,  the  more  was  the  admiration  which  they  ex- 
cited. On  one  occasion,  I  remember  (for  it  was  much  spoken 
about  as  a  manifestation  of  high  spirit)  that  three  of  them, 
hiring  a  coach,  drove  out  on  the  Sunday  to  visit  Eoslin  and 
Hawthornden,  and  in  this  way  spent  their  six  pounds  so  much 
in  the  style  of  gentlemen,  that  they  were  able  to  get  back  to 
the  mallet  without  a  farthing  on  the  evening  of  Monday. 
And  as  they  were  at  work  on  Tuesday  in  consequence,  they 
succeeded,  as  they  said,  in  saving  the  wages  of  a  day  usually 
lost,  just  by  doing  the  thing  so  genteely.  Edinburgh  had  in 
those  times  a  not  very  efficient  police,  and,  in  some  of  its  less 
reputable  localities,  must  have  been  dangerous.  Burke  found 
its  West  Port  a  fitting  scene  for  his  horrid  trade  a  good  many 
years  after ;  and  from  the  stories  of  some  of  our  bolder  spirits, 
which,  though  mayhap  exaggerated,  had  evidently  their  nu- 
cleus of  truth,  there  was  not  a  little  of  the  violent  and  the  law- 
less perpetrated  in  its  viler  haunts  during  the  years  of  the  spec- 
ulation mania.  Four  of  our  masons  found,  one  Saturday  even- 
ing, a  country  lad  bound  hand  and  foot  on  the  floor  of  a  dark 
inner  room  in  one  of  the  dens  of  the  High  Street ;  and  such 
was  the  state  of  exhaustion  to  which  he  was  reduced,  mainly 
through  the  compression  of  an  old  apron  wrapped  tightly 
round  his  face,  that  though  they  set  nim  loose,  it  was  some 
time  ere  he  could  muster  strength  enough  to  crawl  away.  He 
had  been  robbed  by  a  bevy  of  women  whom  he  had  been 
foolish  enough  to  treat ;  and  on  threatening  to  call  in  the 
watchman,  they  had  fallen  upon  a  way  of  keeping  him  quiet, 
which,  save  for  the  interference  of  my  wild  fellow-workmen, 


314 

would  soon  have  rendered  him  permanently  so.     And  such 
was  but  one  of  many  stories  of  the  kind. 

There  was  of  course  a  considerable  diversity  of  talent  and 
acquirement  among  my  more  reckless  associates  at  the  work ; 
and  it  was  curious  enough  to  mark  their  very  various  views 
regarding  what  constituted  spirit  or  the  want  of  it.  One 
weak  lad  used  to  tell  us  abou*  a  singularly  spirited  brother 
apprentice  of  his,  who  not  only  drank,  kept  loose  company 
and  played  all  sorts  of  very  mischievous  practical  jokes,  but 
even  occasionally  stole  out  of  warehouses ;  which  was  of 
course  a  very  dauntless  thing,  seeing  that  it  brought  him  with- 
in wind  of  the  gallows ;  whereas  another  of  our  wild  work- 
men,— a  man  of  sense  and  intelligence, — not  unfrequently  cut 
short  the  narratives  of  the  weaker  brother,  by  characterizing 
his  spirited  apprentice  as  a  mean,  graceless  scamp,  who,  had 
he  got  his  deservings,  would  have  been  hung  like  a  dog.  ] 
found  that  the  intelligence  which  results  from  a  fair  school 
education,  sharpened  by  a  subsequent  taste  for  reading,  very 
much  heightened  in  certain  items  the  standard  by  which  my 
comrades  regulated  their  conduct.  Mere  intelligence  formed 
no  guard  amongst  them  against  intemperance  or  licentious- 
ness ;  but  it  did  form  a  not  ineffectual  protection  against  what 
are  peculiarly  the  mean  vices, — such  as  theft,  and  the  grosser 
and  more  creeping  forms  of  untruthfulness  and  dishonesty. 
Of  course,  exceptional  cases  occur  in  all  grades  of  society : 
there  have  been  accomplished  ladies  of  wealth  and  rank  who 
have  indulged  in  a  propensity  for  stealing  out  of  drapers'  shops, 
and  gentlemen  of  birth  and  education  who  could  not  be  trusted 
in  a  library  or  a  bookseller's  back-room  ;  and  what  sometimes 
occurs  in  the  higher  walks  must  be  occasionally  exemplified 
in  the  lower  also;  but,  judging  from  what  I  have  seen,  I 
must  hold  it  as  a  general  rule,  that  a  good  intellectual  educa- 
tion is  a  not  inefficient  protection  against  the  meaner  felonies, 
though  not  in  any  degree  against  the  "  pleasant  vices."  The 
only  adequate  protection  against  both  equally  is  the  sort  of 
education  which  my  friend  John  Wilson  the  laborer  exem- 
plified, -a  kind  of  education  not  often  acquired  in  schools, 


OR,    THE   STORY   OF   MY   EDUCATION.  315 

kid  not  much  more  frequently  possessed  by  schoolmasters  than 
by  any  other  class  of  professional  men. 

The  most  remarkable  man  in  our  party  was  a  young  fellow 
of  three-and-twenty, — at  least  as  much  a  blackguard  as  any 
of  his  companions,  but  possessed  of  great  strength  of  character 
and  intellect,  and,  with  all  his  wildness,  marked  by  very  noble 
traits.  He  was  a  strongly  and  not  inelegantly  formed  man, 
of  about  six  feet, — dark  complexioned,  and  of  a  sullen  cast  of 
countenance,  which,  however,  though  he  could,  I  doubt  not, 
become  quite  as  formidable  as  he  looked,  concealed  in  his 
ordinary  moods  much  placidity  of  temper,  and  a  rich  vein  of 

humor.     Charles was  the  recognized  hero  of  the  squad ; 

but  he  differed  considerably  from  the  men  who  admired  him 
most.  Burns  tells  us  that  he  "  often  courted  the  acquaint- 
ance of  the  part  of  mankind  commonly  known  by  the  ordi- 
nary phrase  of  blackguards  ;"  and  that,  "  though  disgraced  by 
follies,  nay,  sometimes  stained  with  guilt,  he  had  yet  found 
among  them,  in  not  a  few  instances,  some  of  the  noblest  vir- 
tues,— magnanimity,  generosity,  disinterested  friendship,  and 
even  modesty."  I  cannot  say  with  the  poet  that  I  ever  court- 
ed the  acquaintance  of  blackguards ;  but  though  the  labor- 
ing man  may  select  his  friends,  he  cannot  choose  his  work- 
fellows  ;  and  so  I  have  not  unfrequently  come  in  contact  with 
blackguards,  and  have  had  opportunities  of  pretty  thoroughly 
knowing  them.  And  my  experience  of  the  class  has  been  very 
miich  the  reverse  of  that  of  Burns.  I  have  usually  found 
their  virtues  of  a  merely  theatric  cast,  and  their  vices  real ; 
much  assumed  generosity  in  some  instances,  but  a  callous- 
ness of  feeling,  and  meanness  of  spirit,  lying  concealed  beneath. 
In  this  poor  fellow,  however,  I  certainly  did  find  a  sample  of 
the  noble  variety  of  the  genus.  Poor  Charles  did  too  de- 
cidedly belong  to  it.  He  it  was  that  projected  the  Sunday 
party  to  Roslin  ;  and  he  it  was  that,  pressing  his  way  into  the 
recesses  of  a  disreputable  house  in  the  High  Street,  found 
the  fast-bound  wight  choaking  in  an  apron,  and,  unloosing 
the  cords,  let  him  go.  No  man  of  the  party  squandered 
his  gains   more  recklessly  than  Charles,  or  had  looser  no- 


316  MY  SCHOOLS  AND  SCHOOLMASTERS; 

tions  regarding  the  egitimacy  of  the  uses  to  which  he  too 
often  applied  them.  And  yet,  notwithstanding,  he  was  a 
generous-hearted  fellow;  and,  under  the  influence  of  religious 
principle,  would,  like  Burns  himself,  have  made  a  very  noble 
man. 

In  gradually  forming  my  acquaintance  with  him,  I  was  at 
first  struck  b}  the  circumstance  that  he  never  join  -d  in  the 
clumsy  ridicule  with  which  I  used  to  be  assailed  by  the  other 
workmen.  When  left,  too,  on  one  occasion,  in  consequence 
of  a  tacit  combination  against  me,  to  roll  up  a  large  stone  to 
the  sort  of  block-bench,  or  siege,  as  it  is  technically  termed,  on 
which  the  mass  had  to  be  hewn,  and  as  I  was  slowly  succeed- 
ing in  doing,  through  dint  of  very  violent  effort,  what  some  two 
or  three  men  usually  united  to  do,  Charles  stepped  out  to  assist 
me;  and  the  combination  at  once  broke  down.  Unlike  the 
others,  too,  who,  while  they  never  scrupled  to  take  odds  against 
me,  seemed  sufficiently  chary  of  coming  in  contact  with  me 
singly,  he  learned  to  seek  me  out  in  our  intervals  of  labor, 
and  to  converse  on  subjects  upon  which  we  felt  a  common  in- 
terest. He  was  not  only  an  excellent  operative  mechanic,  but 
possessed  also  of  considerable  architectural  skill ;  and  in  this 
special  province  we  found  an  interchange  of  idea  not  unprofit- 
able. He  had  a  turn,  too,  for  reading,  though  he  was  by  no 
means  extensively  read ;  and  liked  to  converse  about  books. 
Nor,  though  the  faculty  had  been  but  little  cultivated,  was  he 
devoid  of  an  eye  for  the  curious  in  nature.  On  directing  his 
attention,  one  morning,  to  a  well-marked  impression  of  lepi- 
dodendron,  which  delicately  fretted  with  its  lozenge-shaped 
net-work  one  of  the  planes  of  the  stone  before  me,  he  began 
to  describe,  with  a  minuteness  of  observation  not  common 
among  working  men,  certain  strange  forms  which  had  attract- 
ed his  notice  when  employed  among  the  gray  flagstones  of 
Forfarshire.  I  long  after  recognized  in  his  description  that 
strange  crustacean  of  the  Middle  Old  Red  Sandstone  of  Scot- 
land, the  Pterygotus, — an  organism  which  was  wholly  un- 
known at  this  time  to  geologists,  and  which  is  but  partially 
known  still;  and  I  saw  in  1838,  on  the  publication,  in  its 


317 

/irsf  edition,  of  the  "  Elements"  of  Sir  Charles  Lyell,  what  he 
meant  to  indicate,  by  a  rude  sketch  which  he  drew  on  the 
stone  before  us,  and  which,  to  the  base  of  a  semi-ellipsis,  some- 
what resembling  a  horse-shoe,  united  an  angular  prolongation 
not  very  unlike  the  iron  stem  of  a  pointing  trowel  drawn  from 
the  handle.  He  had  evidently  seen,  long  ere  it  had  been  de- 
tected L  r  the  scientific  eye,  that  strange  ichthyolite  of  the  Old 
Red  system,  the  Cephalaspis.  His  story,  though  he  used  to 
tell  it  with  great  humor,  and  no  little  dramatic  effect,  was  in 
reality  a  very  sad  one.  He  had  quarrelled,  when  quite  a  lad, 
with  one  of  his  fellow-workmen,  and  was  unfortunate  enough, 
in  the  pugilistic  encounter  which  followed,  to  break  his  jaw- 
bone,  and  otherwise  so  severely  to  injure  him.  that  for  some 
time  his  recovery  seemed  doubtful.  Flying,  pursued  by  the 
officers  of  the  law,  he  was,  after  a  few  days'  hiding,  appre- 
hended, lodged  in  jail,  tried  at  the  High  Court  of  Judiciary, 
and  ultimately  sentenced  to  three  months'  imprisonment.  And 
these  three  months  he  had  to  spend — for  such  was  the  wretch- 
ed arrangement  of  the  time — in  the  worst  society  in  the  world. 
In  sketching,  as  he  sometimes  did,  for  the  general  amusement, 
the  characters  of  the  various  prisoners  with  whom  he  had  as- 
sociated,— from  the  sneaking  pick-pocket  and  the  murderous 
ruffian,  to  the  simple  Highland  smuggler,  who  had  converted 
his  grain  into  whisky,  with  scarce  intelligence  enough  to  see  that 
there  was  aught  morally  wrong  in  the  transaction, — he  sought 
only  to  be  as  graphic  and  humorous  as  he  could,  and  always 
with  complete  success.  But  there  attached  to  his  narratives 
an  unintentional  moral ;  and  I  cannot  yet  call  them  up  with- 
out feeling  indignant  at  that  detestable  practice  of  promiscuous 
imprisonment  which  so  long  obtained  in  our  country,  and  which 
had  the  effect  of  converting  its  jails  into  such  complete  criminal- 
manufacturing  institutions,  that,  had  the  honest  men  of  the 
community  risen  and  dealt  by  them  as  the  Lord-George-Gor- 
don mob  dealt  with  Newgate,  I  hardly  think  they  would  have 
been  acting  out  of  character.  Poor  Charles  had  a  nobility  in 
his  nature  which  saved  him  from  being  contaminated  by  what 
was  worst  in  his  meaner  associates ;  but  he  was  none  the  bet- 


318  MY    SCHOOLS  AND   SCHOOLMASTERS  [ 

ter  for  his  imprisonment,  and  he  quitted  jail,  of  course,  a 
marked  man  ;  and  his  after  career  was,  I  fear,  all  the  more 
reckless  in  consequence  of  the  stain  imparted  at  this  time  to 
his  character.  He  was  as  decidedly  a  leader  among  his  brother 
workmen  as  I  myself  had  been,  when  sowing  my  wild  oats, 
among  my  school-fellows ;  but  society  in  its  settled  state,  and 
in  a  country  such  as  ours,  allows  no  such  scope  to  the  man  as 
it  does  to  the  boy ;  and  so  his  leadership,  dangerous  both  to 
himself  and  his  associates,  had  chiefly  as  the  scene  of  its  trophies 
the  grosser  and  more  lawless  haunts  of  vice  and  dissipation. 
His  course  through  life  was  a  sad,  and,  I  fear,  a  brief  one. 
When  the  sudden  crash  in  the  commercial  world  took  place, 
in  which  the  speculation  mania  of  1824-25  terminated,  he 
was,  with  thousands  more,  thrown  out  of  employment ;  and, 
having  saved  not  a  farthing  of  his  earnings,  he  was  compelled, 
under  the  pressure  of  actual  want,  to  enlist  as  a  soldier  into 
one  of  the  regiments  of  the  line,  bound  for  one  of  the  inter- 
tropical colonies.  And  there,  as  his  old  comrades  lost  ail 
trace  of  him,  he  too  probably  fell  a  victim,  in  an  insalubrious 
climate,  to  old  habits  and  new  rum. 

Finding  me  incorrigible,  I  was  at  length  left  by  my  brother 
operatives  to  be  as  peculiar  as  I  pleased ;  and  the  working 
portion  of  the  autumnal  months  passed  off  pleasantly  enough 
in  hewing  great  stones  under  the  branching  foliage  of  the  elm 
and  chestnut  trees  of  Niddry  Park.  From  the  circumstance, 
however,  that  the  stones  were  so  great,  the  previous  trial  had 
been  an  embarrassing  one ;  and,  though  too  proud  to  confess 
that  I  cared  aught  about  the  matter,  I  was  now  glad  enough 
that  it  was  fairly  over.  Our  modern  Temperance  Societies — 
institutions  which  at  this  time  had  not  begun  to  exist — have 
done  much  to  shield  sober  working  men  from  combinations 
of  the  trying  character  to  which,  in  the  generation  well-nigh 
passed  away,  they  were  too  often  exposed.  There  are  few 
"working  parties  which  have  not  now  their  groupes  of  enthu- 
siastic Teetotallers,  that  always  band  together  against  the 
drinkers,  and  mutually  assist  and  keep  one  another  in  coun- 
tenance j  and  a  breakwater  is  thus  formed  in  the  middle  of 


OR,   THF   STORY  OF  MY  EDUCATION.  319 

the  stream,  to  protect  from  that  grinding  oppression  of  the 
poor  by  the  poor,  which,  let  popular  agitators  disclaim  on  the 
other  side  as  they  may,  is  at  once  more  trying  and  more  gene- 
ral than  the  oppression  which  they  experience  from  the  great 
and  wealthy.  According  to  the  striking  figure  of  the  wise  old 
king,  "  it  is  like  a  sweeping  rain,  which  leaveth  no  food.1' 
Fanaticism  in  itself  is  not  a  good  thing  ;  nor  are  there  many 
quiet  people  who  do  not  dislike  enthusiasm ;  and  the  mem- 
bers of  new  sects,  whether  they  be  religious  sects  or  no,  are 
almost  always  enthusiasts,  and  in  some  degree  fanatical.  A 
man  can  scarce  become  a  vegetarian  even  without  also  be- 
coming in  some  measure  intolerant  of  the  still  large  and  not 
very  disreputable  class  that  eat  beef  with  their  greens,  and 
herrings  with  their  potatoes ;  and  the  drinkers  of  water  do 
say  rather  strong  things  of  the  men  who,  had  they  been  guests 
at  the  marriage  in  Cana  of  Galilee,  would  have  seen  no  great 
harm  in  partaking  in  moderation  of  the  wine.  There  is  a 
somewhat  intolerant  fanaticism  among  the  Teetotallers,  just  as 
there  is  fanaticism  among  most  other  new  sects  ;  and  yet,  re- 
cognizing it  simply  as  strength,  and  knowing  what  it  has  to  con- 
tend with,  I  am  much  disposed  to  tolerate  it,  whether  it  tolerate 
me  or  no.  Human  nature,  with  all  its  defects,  is  a  wiser 
thing  than  the  mere  common  sense  of  the  creatures  whose 
nature  it  is  ;  and  we  find  in  it  special  provisions,  as  in  the  in- 
stincts of  the  humbler  animals,  for  overmastering  the  special 
difficulties  with  which  it  is  its  destiny  to  contend.  And  the 
sort  of  fanaticism  to  which  I  refer  seems  to  be  one  cf  those 
provisions.  A  few  Teetotallers  of  the  average  calibre  and 
strength,  who  take  their  stand  against  the  majority  in  a  party 
of  wild  dissipated  mechanics,  would  require  a  considerable 
amount  of  vigorous  fanaticism  to  make  good  their  position ; 
nor  do  I  see  in  ordinary  men,  as  society  at  present  exists, 
aught  at  once  sufficiently  potent  in  its  nature,  and  sufficiently 
general  in  its  existence,  to  take  its  place  and  do  its  work.  It 
seems  to  subsist  in  the  present  imperfect  state  as  a  wise  provi- 
sion, though,  like  o*her  wise  provisions,  such  as  the  horns  of 


320  MY  SCHOOLS  AND  SCHOOLMASTERS  J 

the  bull  or  the  sting  of  the  bee,  it  is  misdirected  at  times,  and 
does  harm. 

Winter  came  on,  and  our  weekly  wages  ^ere  lowered  im- 
mediately after  Hallow-day,  from  twenty-four  to  fifteen  shil- 
lings per  week.  This  was  deemed  too  large  a  reduction  ;  and, 
reckoning  by  the  weekly  hours  during  which,  on  the  average, 
we  were  still  able  to  work, — forty -two,  as  nearly  as  1  could 
calculate,  instead  of  sixty, — it  was  too  great  a  reduction  by 
about  one  shilling  and  ninepence.  I  would,  however,  in  the 
circumstances,  have  taken  particular  care  not  to  strike  work 
for  an  advance.  I  knew  that  three-fourths  of  the  masons 
about  town — quite  as  improvident  as  the  masons  of  our  own 
party — could  not  live  on  their  resources  for  a  fortnight,  and 
had  no  general  fund  to  sustain  them  ;  and  further,  that  many 
of  the  master-builders  were  not  very  urgently  desirous  to  press 
on  their  work  throughout  the  winter.  And  so,  when,  on 
coming  to  the  work-shed  on  the  Monday  morning  after  the 
close  of  our  first  fortnight  on  the  reduced  scale,  I  found  my 
comrades  gathered  in  front  of  it  in  a  group,  and  learned  that 
there  was  a  grand  strike  all  over  the  district,  I  received  the 
intelligence  with  as  little  of  the  enthusiasm  of  the  "  indepen- 
dent associated  mechanic"  as  possibly  may  be.  "  You  are  in 
the  right  in  your  claims,"  I  said  to  Charles ;  "  but  you  have 
taken  a  bad  time  for  urging  them,  and  will  be  beaten  to  a  cer- 
tainty. The  masters  are  much  better  prepared  for  a  strike 
than  you  are.  How,  may  I  ask,  are  you  yourself  provided  with 
the  sinews  of  war  ?"  "  Very  ill  indeed,"  said  Charles,  scratch- 
ing his  head  :  "  if  the  masters  don't  give  in  before  Saturday, 
it's  all  up  with  me  ;  but  never  mind ;  let  us  have  one  day's 
fun  :  there's  to  be  a  grand  meeting  at  Bruntsfield  Links  ;  let 
us  go  in  as  a  deputation  from  the  country  masons,  and  make 
a  speech  about  our  rights  and  duties  ;  and  then,  if  we  see  mat- 
ters going  very  far  wrong,  we  can  just  step  back  again,  and 
begin  work  to-morrow."  "  Bravely  resolved,"  1  said  :  "  I 
shall  go  with  you  by  all  means,  and  take  notes  of  your 
speech,"     We  marched  in  to  town,  about  sixteen  in  number  ; 


OR,   THE    STOKY  OF   MY  EDUCATION.  321 

and,  on  joining  the  crowd  already  assembled  on  the  Links,  were 
recognized  by  the  deep  red  hue  of  our  clothes  and  aprons, 
which  differed  considerably  from  that  borne  by  workers  in  the 
paler  Edinburgh  stone,  as  a  reinforcement  from  a  distance,  and 
were  received  with  loud  cheers.  Charles,  however,  did  not 
make  his  speech :  the  meeting,  which  was  about  eight  hun- 
dred strong,  seemed  fully  in  the  possession  of  a  few  crack 
orators,  who  spoke  with  a  fluency  to  which  he  could  make  no 
pretensions ;  and  so  he  replied  to  the  various  calls  from  among 
his  comrades,  of  "  Cha,  Cha,"  by  assuring  them  that  he  could 
not  catch  the  eye  of  the  gentleman  in  the  chair.  The  meet- 
ing had,  of  course,  neither  chair  nor  chairman ;  and  after  a 
good  deal  of  idle  speech-making,  which  seemed  to  satisfy  the 
speakers  themselves  remarkably  well,  but  which  at  least  some 
of  their  auditory  regarded  as  nonsense,  wre  found  that  the  only 
motion  on  which  we  could  harmoniously  agree  was  a  motion 
for  an  adjournment.  And  so  we  adjourned  till  the  evening, 
fixing  as  our  place  of  meeting  one  of  the  humbler  halls  of 
the  city. 

My  comrades  proposed  that  we  should  pass  the  time  until 
the  hour  of  meeting  in  a  public-house  ;  and,  desirous  of  se- 
curing a  glimpse  of  the  sort  of  enjoyment  for  which  they  sacri- 
ficed so  much,  I  accompanied  them.  Passing  not  a  few  more 
inviting-looking  places,  we  entered  a  low  tavern  in  the  upper 
part  of  the  Canongate,  kept  in  an  old  half-ruinous  building, 
which  has  since  disappeared.  We  passed  on  through  a  nar- 
row passage  to  a  low-roofed  room  in  the  centre  of  the  erection, 
into  which  the  light  of  day  never  penetrated,  and  in  which  the 
gas  was  burning  dimly  in  a  close  sluggish  atmosphere,  ren- 
dered still  more  stifling  by  tobacco-smoke,  and  a  strong  smell 
)f  ardent  spirits.  In  the  middle. of  the  crazy  floor  there  was 
a  trap-door  which  lay  open  at  the  time ;  and  a  wild  combina- 
tion of  sounds,  in  which  the  yelping  of  a  clog,  and  a  few  gruff 
voices  that  seemed  cheering  him  on,  were  most  noticeable,  rose 
from  the  apartment  below.  It  was  customary  at  this  time  for 
dram-shops  to  keep  badgers  housed  in  long  narrow  boxes,  and 
for  working  men  to  keep  do^s  ;  and  it  was  part  of  the  ordi- 


322  MY  SCHOOLS  AKD  SCHOOLMASTERS; 

nary  sport  of  such  places  to  set  the  dogs  to  unhouse  the  badgers. 
The  wild  sport  which  Scott  describes  in  his  "  Guy  Mannering," 
as  pursued  by  Dandy  Dinmont  and  his  associates  among  the 
Cheviots,  was  extensively  practised  twenty-nine  years  ago  amid 
the  dingier  haunts  of  the  High  Street  and  Canongate.  Our 
party,  like  most  others,  had  its  dog, — a  repulsive-looking  brute, 
with  an  earth-directed  eye,  as  if  he  carried  about  with  him  an 
evil  conscience ;  and  my  companions  were  desirous  of  getting 
his  earthing  ability  tested  upon  the  badger  of  the  establishment ; 
but  on  summoning  the  bar-keeper,  we  were  told  that  the 
party  below  had  got  the  start  of  us  :  their  dog  was,  as  we  might 
hear,  "just  drawing  the  badger  ;  and  before  our  dog  could  be 
permitted  to  draw  him,  the  poor  brute  would  require  to  get 
an  hour's  rest."  I  need  scarce  say,  that  the  hour  was  spent  in 
hard  drinking  in  that  stagnant  atmosphere  ;  and  we  then  all 
descended  through  the  trap-door,  by  means  of  a  ladder,  into  a 
bare-walled  dungeon,  dark  and  damp,  and  where  the  pestifer- 
ous air  smelt  like  that  of  a  burial  vault.  The  scene  which 
followed  was  exceedingly  repulsive  and  brutal, — nearly  as 
much  so  as  some  of  the  scenes  furnished  by  those  otter  hunts  in 
which  the  aristocracy  of  the  country  delight  occasionally  to  in- 
dulge. Amid  shouts  and  yells,  the  badger,  with  the  blood  of 
his  recent  conflict  still  fresh  upon  him,  was  again  drawn  to  the 
box  mouth  ;  and  the  party  returning  satisfied  to  the  apartment 
above,  again  betook  themselves  to  hard  drinking.  In  a  short 
time  the  liquor  began  to  tell,  not  first,  as  might  be  supposed, 
on  our  younger  men,  who  were  mostly  tall,  vigorous  fellows, 
in  the  first  flush  of  their  full  strength,  but  on  a  few  of  the 
middle-aged  workmen,  whose  constitutions  seemed  undermin- 
ed by  a  previous  course  of  dissipation  and  debauchery.  The 
conversation  became  very  loud,  very  involved,  and,  though 
highly  seasoned  with  emphatic  oaths,  very  insipid  ;  and  leav 
ing  with  Cha, — who  seemed  somewhat  uneasy  that  my  eye 
should  be  upon  their  meeting  in  its  hour  of  weakness, — money 
enough  to  clear  off  my  share  of  the  reckoning,  I  stole  out  to 
the  King's  Park,  and  passed  an  hour  to  better  purpose  among 
the  trap  rocks  than  I  could  possibly  have  spent  it   beside 


OR,    THE   STORY   OF   MY   EDUCATION.  323 

the  trap-door.  Of  that  tavern  party  I  am  not  aware  that  a 
single  individual  save  the  writer  is  now  living :  its  very  dog 
did  not  live  out  half  his  days.  His  owner  was  alarmed  one 
morning,  shortly  after  this  time,  by  the  intelligence  that  a 
dozen  of  sheep  had  been  worried  during  the  night  on  a  neigh- 
boring farm,  and  that  a  dog  very  like  his  had  been  seen 
prowling  about  the  fold  ;  but  in  order  to  determine  the  point, 
he  would  be  visited,  it  was  added,  in  the  course  of  the  day,  by  , 
the  shepherd  and  a  law-officer.  The  dog  meanwhile,  how  * 
evftr,  conscious  of  guilt,- — for  dogs  do  seem  to  have  consciences 
in  such  matters, — was  nowhere  to  be  found,  though,  after  the 
lapse  of  nearly  a  week,  he  again  appeared  at  the  work  ;  and 
his  master,  slipping  a  rope  round  his  neck,  brought  him  to  a 
deserted  coal-pit  half  filled  with  water,  that  opened  in  an  ad- 
jacent field,  and,  flinging  him  in,  left  the  authorities  no  clue 
by  which  to  establish  his  identity  with  the  robber  and  assassin 
of  the  fold. 

I  had  now  quite  enough  of  the  strike ;  and,  instead  of  at- 
tending the  evening  meeting,  passed  the  night  with  my  friend 
William  Ross.  Curious  to  know,  however,  whether  my  ab- 
sence had  been  observed  by  my  brother  workmen,  I  asked 
Cha,  when  we  next  met,  "  what  he  thought  of  our  meeting  ?" 
"  Gudesake !"  he  replied,  "  let  that  flee  stick  to  the  wa' !  We 
got  upon  the  stuff  after  you  left  us,  and  grew  deaf  to  time, 
and  so  not  one  of  us  has  seen  the  meeting  yet."  I  learned, 
however^  that  though  somewhat  reduced  in  numbers,  it  had 
been  very  spirited  and  energetic,  and  had  resolved  on  nailing 
the  colors  to  the  mast ;  but  in  a  few  mornings  subsequent, 
several  of  the  squads  returned  to  work  on  their  master's  terms, 
and  all  broke  down  in  about  a  week  after.  Contrary  to  what 
I  would  have  expected  from  my  previous  knowledge  of  him,  I 
found  that  my  friend  William  Ross  took  a  warm  interest  in 
strikes  and  combinations,  and  was  much  surprised  at  the  apathy  t 
which  I  manifested  on  this  occasion ;  nay,  that  he  himself,  as 
he  told  me,  actually  officiated  as  clerk  for  a  combined  society 
of  house-painters,  and  entertained  sanguine  hopes  regarding 
the  happy  influence  which  the  principle  of  union  was  yet  to 
15 


324  MY   SCHOOLS    AND   SCHOOLMASTERS  ; 

exercise  on  the  status  and  comfort  of  the  working  man.  There 
are  no  problems  more  difficult  than  those  which  speculative 
men  sometimes  attempt  solving,  when  they  set  themselves  to 
predict  how  certain  given  characters  would  act  in  certain  given 
circumstances.  In  what  spirit,  it  has  been  asked,  would  So- 
crates have  listened  to  the  address  of  Paul  on  Mars  Hill,  had 
he  lived  a  few  ages  later?  and  what  sort  of  a  statesman  would 
Robert  Burns  have  made'?  I  cannot  answer  either  question  ; 
but  this  I  know,  that  from  my  intimate  acq  mintanee  with  the 
retiring,  unobtrusive  character  of  my  friend  in  early  life,  I 
should  have  predicted  that  he  would  have  taken  no  interest 
whatever  in  strikes  or  combinations  ;  and  I  was  now  surprised 
to  find  the  case  otherwise.  And  he,  on  the  other  hand,  equal- 
ly intimate  with  my  comparatively  wild  boyhood,  and  my  in- 
fluence among  my  school-fellows,  would  have  predicted  that  I 
should  have  taken  a  very  warm  interest  in  such  combinations, 
mayhap  as  a  ringleader ;  at  all  events,  as  an  energetic,  influen- 
tial member ;  and  he  was  now  not  a  little  astonished  to  see  me 
keeping  aloof  from  them,  as  things  of  no  account  or  value.  I 
believe,  however,  we  were  both  acting  in  character.  Lacking 
my  obstinacy,  he  had  in  some  degree  yielded,  on  first  coming 
to  the  capital,  to  the  tyranny  of  his  brother  workmen  ;  and, 
becoming  one  of  themselves,  and  identifying  his  interests  with 
theirs,  his  talents  and  acquirements  had  recommended  him  to 
an  office  of  trust  among  them  ;  whereas  I,  stubbornly  battling, 
like.  Harry  of  the  Wynd,  "  for  my  own  hand,"  would  not  stir 
a  finger  in  assertion  of  the  alleged  rights  of  fellows  who  had 
no  respect  for  the  rights  which  were  indisputably  mine. 

I  may  here  mention,  that  this  first  year  of  the  building 
mania  was  also  the  first,  in  the  present  century,  of  those  great 
strikes  among  workmen,  of  which  the  public  has  since  heard  and 
seen  so  much.  Up  till  this  time,  combination  among  operatives 
for  the  purpose  of  raising  the  rate  of  wages  had  been  a  crime 
punishable  by  law  ;  and  though  several  combinations  and  trade 
unions  did  exist,  open  strikes,  which  would  have  been  a  too 
palpable  manifestation  of  them  to  be  tolerated,  could  scarce  be 
said  ever  to  take  place.     I  saw  enough  at  the  period  to  con- 


325 

vince  me,  that  though  the  right  of  combination,  abstractly 
considered,  is  just  and  proper,  the  strikes  which  would  re- 
sult from  it  as  consequences  would  be  productive  of  much 
evil  and  little  good  ;  and  in  an  argument  with  my  friend  Wil- 
liam on  the  subject,  I  ventured  to  assure  him  that  his  house- 
painters'  union  would  never  benefit  the  operative  house  painters 
as  a  class,  and  urged  him  to  give  up  his  clerkship.  "  There  is 
a  want,"  I  said,  "  of  true  leadership  among  our  operatives  in 
'hese  combinations.  It  is  the  wilder  spirits  that  dictate  the 
conditions ;  and,  pitching  their  demands  high,  they  begin 
usually  by  enforcing  acquiescence  in  them  on  the  quieter  and 
more  moderate  among  their  companions.  They  are  tyrants  to 
their  fellows  ere  they  come  into  collision  with  their  masters, 
and  have  thus  an  enemy  in  the  camp,  not  unwilling  to  take 
advantage  of  their  seasons  of  weakness,  and  prepared  to  re- 
joice, though  secretly  mayhap,  in  their  defeat  and  reverses. 
And  further,  their  discomfiture  will  be  always  quite  certain 
enough  when  seasons  of  depression  come,  from  the  circum- 
stance that,  fixing  their  terms  in  prosperous  times,  they  will 
fix  them  with  reference  rather  to  their  present  power  of  en- 
forcing them,  than  to  that  medium  line  of  fair  and  equal  ad- 
justment on  which  a  conscientious  man  could  plant  his  foot 
and  make  a  firm  stand.  Men  such  as  you,  able  and  ready  to 
work  in  behalf  of  these  combinations,  will  of  course  get  the 
work  to  do,  but  you  will  have  little  or  no  power  given  you  in 
their  direction  :  the  direction  will  be  apparently  in  the  hands 
of  a  few  fluent  gabbers  ;  and  yet  even  they  will  not  be  the 
actual  directors, — they  will  be  but  the  exponents  and  voices  of 
the  general  mediocre  sentiment,  and  inferior  sense  of  the  mass 
as  a  whole,  and  acceptable  only  so  long  as  they  give  utterance 
to  that ;  and  so,  ultimately,  exceedingly  little  will  be  won  in 
this  way  for  working  men.  It  is  well  that  they  should  be  al- 
lowed to  combine,  seeing  that  combination  is  permitted  to 
those  who  employ  them  ;  but  until  the  majority  of  our  work- 
ing men  of  the  south  become  very  different  from  what  they 
now  are, — greatly  wiser  and  greatly  better, — there  will  be 
more  lost  fhan  gamed  by  their  combinations.     According  to 


326  MY   SCHOOLS   AND    SCHOOLMASTERS'  ; 

the  circumstances  of  the  time  and  season,  the  current  will  be 
at  one  period  running  in  their  favor  against  the  masters,  and 
at  another  in  favor  of  the  masters  against  them  :  there  will 
be  a  continual  ebb  and  flow,  like  that  of  the  sea,  but  no  gen- 
eral advance  ;  and  the  sooner  that  the  like  of  you  and  I  get 
out  of  the  rough  conflict  and  jostle  of  the  tideway,  and  set  our- 
selves to  labor  apart  on  our  own  internal  resources,  it  will  be 
all  the  better  for  us."  William,  however,  did  not  give  up  his 
clerkship ;  and  I  dare  say  the  sort  of  treatment  which  I  had 
received  at  the  hands  of  my  fellow- workmen  made  me  express 
myself  rather  strongly  on  the  subject ;  but  the  actual  history 
of  the  numerous  strikes  and  combinations  which  have  taken 
place  during  the  quarter  of  a  century  and  more  which  has 
since  intervened,  is  of  a  kind  not  in  the  least  suited  to  modify 
my  views.  There  is  a  want  of  judicious  leadership  among 
our  working  men ;  and  such  of  the  autobiographies  of  the 
class  as  are  able  and  interesting  enough  to  obtain  a  hearing 
for  their  authors  show,  I  am  inclined  to  think,  how  this  takes 
place.  Combination  is  first  brought  to  bear  among  them 
against  the  men,  their  fellows,  who  have  vigor  enough  of  in- 
tellect to  think  and  act  for  themselves  ;  and  such  always  is 
the  character  of  the  born  leader  :  their  true  leaders  are  almost 
always  forced  into  the  opposition  ;  and  thus  separating  be- 
tween themselves  and  the  men  fitted  by  nature  to  render  them 
formidable,  they  fall  under  the  direction  of  mere  chatterers  and 
stump  orators,  which  is  in  reality  no  direction  at  all.  The 
author  of  the  "  Working  Man's  Way  in  the  World," — evi- 
dently a  very  superior  man, — had,  he  tells  us,  to  quit  at  one 
time  his  employment,  overborne  by  the  senseless  ridicule  of  his 
brother  workmen.  Somerville  states  in  his  Autobiography, 
that,  both  as  a  laboring  man  and  a  soldier,  it  was  from  the  hands 
of  his  comrades  that, — save  in  one  memorable  instance, — he 
had  experienced  all  the  tyranny  and  oppression  of  which  he 
had  been  the  victim.  Nay,  Benjamin  Franklin  himself  was 
deemed  a  much  more  ordinary  man  in  the  printing-house  in 
Bartholomew  Close,  where  he  was  teased  and  laughed  at  as 
the  Wate~ -American,  than  in  the  House  of  Representatives, 


327 

the  Royal  Society,  or  the  court  of  France.  The  great  Printer, 
though  recognized  by  accomplished  politicians  as  a  profound 
statesman,  and  by  men  of  solid  science  as  "  the  most  rational 
of  the  philosophers,"  was  regarded  by  his  poor  brother  com- 
positors as  merely  an  odd  fellow,  who  did  not  conform  to  their 
drinking  usages,  and  whom  it  was  therefore  fair  to  teaze  and 
annoy  as  a  contemner  of  the  sacrament  of  the  cha2)el* 

The  life  of  my  friend  was,  however,  pitched  on  a  better  and 
higher  tone  than  that  of  most  of  his  brother  unionists.  It  wa 
intellectual  and  moral,  and  its  happier  hours  were  its  hours 
of  quiet  self-improvement,  when,  throwing  himself  on  the  re- 
sources within,  he  forgot  for  the  time  the  unions  and  combina- 
tions that  entailed  upon  him  much  troublesome  occupation, 
but  never  did  him  any  service.  I  regretted,  however,  to  find 
that  a  distrust  of  his  own  powers  was  still  growing  upon  him, 
and  narrowing  his  circle  of  enjoyment.  On  asking  him 
whether  he  still  amused  himself  with  his  flute,  he  turned, 
after  replying  with  a  brief  "  Oh  no,"  to  a  comrade  with  whom 
he  had  lived  for  years,  and  quietly  said  to  him,  by  way  of  ex- 
plaining the  question,  "  Robert,  I  suppose  you  don't  know  I 
was  once  a  grand  flute-player  !"  And  sure  enough  Robert  did 
not  know.  He  had  given  up,  too,  his  water-color  drawing, 
in  wrhich  his  taste  was  decidedly  fine ;  and  even  in  oils,  with 
which  he  still  occasionally  engaged  himself,  instead  of  casting 
himself  full  on  nature,  as  at  an  earlier  period,  he  had  become 
a  copyist  of  the  late  Rev.  Mr.  Thomson  of  Duddingstone,  at 


*  The  kind  of  club  into  which  the  compositors  of  a  printing-house  always  form 
themselves  has  from  time  immemorial  been  termed  a  chapel;  and  the  petty  tricks  by 
which  Franklin  was  annoyed  were  said  to  be  played  him  by  the  chapel  ghost.  "My 
employer  desiring,"  he  says,  "after  some  weeks,  to  have  me  in  the  composing-room, 
I  left  the  pressmen.  A  new  Men  venu  for  drink,  being  five  shillings,  was  demanded 
of  me  by  tlie  compositors.  I  thought  it  an  imposition,  as  I  had  paid  one  to  the  press- 
men. The  master  thought  so  too,  and  forbade  my  paying  it.  1  stood  out  two  or  three 
weeks,  was  accordingly  considered  as  an  excommunicate,  and  had  so  many  little  pieces 
of  private  malice  practiced  on  me  by  mixing  my  sorts,  transposing  and  breaking  my 
matter,  &c,  &c,  if  ever  1  stepped  out  of  the  room,  and  all  ascribed  to  the  chapel 
ghost,  which,  they  said,  ever  haunted  those  not  regularly  admitted,  that,  notwithstand- 
ing ray  master's  protect  on,     found  myself  obliged  to  comply  and  pay  the  money.'' 


328 

that  time  in  the  full  blow  of  his  artistic  reputation ;  nor  could 
I  see  that  he  copied  him  well.  I  urged  and  remonstrated,  but 
to  no  effect.  "  Ah,  Miller,"  he  has  said,  "  what  matters  it 
how  I  amuse  myself?  You  have  stamina  in  you,  and  will 
force  your  way ;  but  I  want  strength :  the  world  will  never 
hear  of  me."  That  overweening  conceit  which  seems  as 
natural  to  the  young  man  as  a  playful  disposition  to  the  kitten, 
or  a  soft  and  timid  one  to  the  puppy,  often  assumes  a  ridicu- 
lous, and  oftener  still  an  unamiable,  aspect.  And  yet,  though 
it  originates  many  very  foolish  things,  it  seems  to  be  in  itself, 
like  the  fanaticism  of  the  Teetotaller,  a  wise  provision,  which, 
were  it  not  made  by  nature,  would  leave  most  minds  without 
spring  enough  to  effect,  with  the  required  energy,  the  move- 
ments necessary  to  launch  them  fairly  into  busy  or  studious 
life.  The  sobered  man  of  mature  age  who  has  learned  pretty 
correctly  to  take  the  measure  of  himself,  has  usually  acquired 
both  habits  and  knowledge  that  assist  him  in  urging  his  on- 
ward way,  and  the  moving  force  of  necessity  always  presses 
him  onward  from  behind ;  but  the  exhilarating  conviction  of 
being  born  to  superior  parts,  and  to  do  something  astonish- 
ingly clever,  seems  necessary  to  the  young  man ;  and  when  I 
see  it  manifesting  itself,  if  not  very  foolishly  or  very  offen- 
sively, I  usually  think  of  my  poor  friend  William  Ross,  who 
was  unfortunate  enough  wholly  to  want  it ;  and  extend  to  it  a 
pretty  ample  toleration.  Ultimately  my  friend  gave  up  paint- 
ing, and  restricted  himself  to  the  ornamental  parts  of  his  pro- 
fession, of  which  he  became  very  much  a  master.  In  finish- 
ing a  ceiling  in  oils,  upon  which  he  had  represented  in  bold 
relief  some  of  the  ornately  sculptured  foliage  of  the  architect, 
the  gentleman  for  whom  he  wrought  (the  son-in-law  of  a  dis- 
tinguished artist,  and  himself  an  amateur),  called  on  his  wife 
to  admire  the  truthful  and  delicate  shading  of  their  house- 
painter.  It  was  astonishing,  he  said,  and  perhaps  somewhat 
humiliating,  to  see  the  mere  mechanic  trenching  so  decidedly 
on  the  province  of  the  artist.  Poor  William  Ross,  however, 
was  no  mere  mechanic ;  and  even  artists  might  have  regarded 
his  encroachments  on  their  proper  domain  with  more  of  com 


OR,    THE   STORY   OF   MY   EDUCATION.  329 

placency  than  humiliation.  One  of  the  last  pieces  of  work 
upon  which  he  wTas  engaged  was  a  gorgeously  painted  ceiling 
in  the  palace  of  some  Irish  bishop,  which  he  had  been  sent  all 
the  way  from  Glasgow  to  finish. 

Every  society,  however  homely,  has  its  picturesque  points, 
nor  did  even  that  of  the  rather  commonplace  hamlet  in  which 
I  resided  at  this  time  wholly  want  them.  There  was  a  de- 
caying cottage  a  few  doors  away,  that  had  for  its  inmate  a 
cross-tempered  old  crone,  who  strove  hard  to  set  up  as  a 
witch,  but  broke  down  from  sheer  want  of  the  necessary 
capital.  She  had  been  one  of  the  underground  workers  of 
Niddry  in  her  time ;  and,  being  as  little  intelligent  as  most 
of  the  other  collier-women  of  the  neighborhood,  she  had  not 
the  necessary  witch-lore  to  adapt  her  pretensions  to  the  ca- 
pacity of  belief  which  obtained  in  the  district.  And  so  the 
general  estimate  formed  regarding  her  was  that  to  which  our 
landlady  occasionally  gave  expression.  "  Donnart  auld  boclie," 
Peggy  used  to  say ;  "  though  she  threaps  hersel'  a  witch,  she's 
nae  mair  witch  than  I  am ;  she's  only  just  trying,  in  her  feck- 
less auld  age,  to  make  folk  stand  in  her  reverence."  Old  Alie 
was,  however,  a  curiosity  in  her  way, — quite  malignant  enough 
to  be  a  real  witch,  and  fitted,  if,  with  a  few  more  advantages 
of  acquirement,  she  had  been  antedated  an  age  or  two,  to  be- 
come as  hopeful  a  candidate  for  a  tar-barrel  as  most  of  her 
class.  Her  next  door  neighbor  was  also  an  old  woman,  and 
well-nigh  as  poor  as  the  crone  ;  but  she  was  an  easy-tempered, 
genial  sort  of  person,  who  wished  harm  to  no  one ;  and  the 
expression  of  content  that  dwelt  on  her  round  fresh  face, 
which,  after  the  wear  of  more  than  seventy  winters,  still  re- 
tained its  modicum  of  color,  contrasted  strongly  with  the 
fierce  wretchedness  that  gleamed  from  the  sharp  and  sallow 
features  of  the  witch.  It  was  evident  that  the  two  old  women, 
though  placed  externally  in  almost  the  same  circumstances, 
had  essentially  a  very  different  lot  assigned  to  them,  and  en- 
.  joyed  existence  in  a  very  unequal  degree.  The  placid  old 
woman  kept  a  solitary  lodger, — "  Davie  the  apprentice," — a 
wayward,  eccentric  lad,  i  mch  about  my  own  age,  though  fa 


330 

but  the  second  "  year  of  his  time,"  who  used  to  fret  even  her 
temper,  and  who,  after  making  trial  of  I  know  not  how  many 
other  professions,  now  began  to  find  that  his  genius  did  not 
lie  to  the  mallet.  Davie  was  stage-mad ;  but  for  the  stage 
nature  seemed  to  have  fitted  him  rather  indifferently  :  she  had 
given  him  a  squat  ungainly  figure,  an  inexpressive  face,  a  voice 
that  in  its  intonations  somewhat  resembled  the  grating  of  a 
carpenter's  saw,  and,  withal,  no  very  nice  conception  of  either 
comic  or  serious  character ;  but  he  could  recite  in  the  "  big 
bow-wow  style,"  and  think  and  dream  of  only  plays  and 
play-actors.  To  Davie  the  world  and  its  concerns  seemed 
unworthy  of  a  moment's  care,  and  the  stage  appeared  the  only 
great  reality.  He  was  engaged,  when  I  first  made  his  ac- 
quaintance, in  writing  a  play,  with  which  he  had  already  filled 
a  whole  quire  of  foolscap,  without,  however,  having  quite  en- 
tered upon  the  plot ;  and  he  read  to  me  some  of  the  scenes  in 
tones  of  such  energy,  that  the  whole  village  heard.  Though 
written  in  the  kind  of  verse  which  Dr.  Young  believed  to  be 
the  language  of  angels,  his  play  was  sad  stuff*;  and  when  he 
paused  for  my  approbation,  I  ventured  to  suggest  an  alteration 
in  one  of  the  speeches.  "  There,  Sir,"  said  Davie,  in  the  vein 
of  Cambyses,  "  take  the  pen ;  let  me  see,  Sir,  how  you  would 
turn  it."  I  accordingly  took  the  pen,  and  re-wrote  the  speech. 
"  Hum,"  said  Davie,  as  he  ran  his  eye  along  the  lines,  "  that, 
Sir,  is  mere  poetry.  What,  think  you,  could  the  great  Kean 
make  of  feeble  stuff  like  that  1  Let  me  tell  you,  Sir,  you  have 
no  notion  whatever  of  stage  effect."  I,  of  course,  at  once  ac- 
quiesced ;  and  Davie,  mollified  by  my  submission,  read  to  me 
yet  another  scene.  Cha,  however,  of  whom  he  stood  a  good 
deal  in  awe,  used  to  tease  him  not  a  little  about  his  play.  I 
have  heard  him  inquire  sedulously  about  the  development  of 
the  story  and  the  management  of  the  characters,  and  whether 
he  was  writing  the  several  parts  with  a  due  eye  to  the  capa- 
bilities of  the  leading  actors  of  the  day  ;  and  Davie,  not  quite 
sure,  apparently,  whether  Cha  was  in  joke  or  earnest,  was 
jsually  on  these  occasions  very  chary  of  reply. 

Davie,  had  he  but  the  means  of  securng  access,  would  have 


331 

walked  in  every  night  to  the  city  to  attend  the  playhouse ;  and 
it  quite  astonished  him,  he  used  to  say,  that  I,  who  really 
knew  something  of  the  drama,  and  had  four  shillings  a-day, 
did  not  nightly  devote  at  least  one  of  the  four  to  purchase  per- 
fect happiness  and  a  seat  in  the  shilling  gallery.  On  some 
two,  or  at  most  three  occasions,  I  did  attend  the  playhouse, 
accompanied  by  Cha  and  a  few  of  the  other  workmen ;  but 
though  I  had  been  greatly  delighted,  when  a  boy,  by  the  act- 
ing of  a  company  of  strollers  that  had  visited  Cromarty,  and 
converted  the  Council  House  Hall  into  a  theatre,  the  greatly 
better  acting  of  the  Edinburgh  company  failed  to  satisfy  me 
now.  The  few  plays,  however,  which  I  saw  enacted  chanced 
to  be  of  a  rather  mediocre  character,  and  gave  no  scope  for  the 
exhibition  of  nice  histrionic  talent ;  nor  were  any  of  the  great 
actors  of  the  south  on  the  Edinburgh  boards  at  the  time.  The 
stage  scenery,  too,  though  quite  fine  enough  of  its  kind,  had, 
I  found,  altogether  a  different  effect  upon  me  from  the  one 
which  it  had  been  elaborated  to  produce.  In  perusing  our 
fine  old  dramas,  it  was  the  truth  of  nature  that  the  vividly- 
drawn  scenes  'and  figures,  and  the  happily  portrayed  charac- 
ters, always  suggested ;  whereas  the  painted  canvas,  and  the 
respectable  but  yet  too  palpable  acting,  served  but  to  unre- 
alize  what  I  saw,  and  to  remind  me  that  I  was  merely  in  a 
theatre.  Farther,  I  deemed  it  too  large  a  price  to  devote  a 
whole  evening  to  see  some  play  acted  which,  mayhap,  as  a 
composition  I  would  not  have  deemed  worth  the  reading ;  and 
so  the  temptation  of  play -going  failed  to  tempt  me ;  and  lat- 
terly, when  my  comrades  set  out  for  the  playhouse,  I  staid  at 
home.  Whatever  the  nature  of  the  process  through  which 
they  have  gone,  a  considerable  proportion  of  the  more  intel- 
ligent mechanics  of  the  present  generation  seem  to  have  landed 
in  conclusions  similar  to  the  one  at  which  I  at  this  time  ar- 
rived. At  least,  for  every  dozen  of  the  class  that  frequented 
the  theatre  thirty  years  ago,  there  is  scarce  one  that  frequents 
it  now.  I  have  said  that  the  scenery  of  the  stage  made  no 
very  favorable  impression  upon  me.  Some  parts  of  it  must, 
however,  have  made  a  considerably  stronger  one  than  I  could 


332 

have  supposed  at  the  time.  Fourteen  years  after,  when  the 
whole  seemed  to  have  passed  out  of  memory,  I  was  lying  ill  of 
small-pox,  which,  though  a  good  deal  modified  apparently  by 
the  vaccination  of  a  long  anterior  period,  was  accompanied  by 
such  a  degree  of  fever,  that  for  two  days  together  one  delirious 
image  continued  to  succeed  another  in  the  troubled  sensorium, 
as  scene  succeeds  scene  in  the  box  of  an  itinerant  showman. 
As  is  not  uncommon,  however,  in  such  cases,  though  ill  enough 
to  be  haunted  by  the  images,  I  was  yet  well  enough  to  know 
that  they  wTere  idle  unrealities,  the  mere  effects  of  indisposi- 
tion ;  and  even  sufficiently  collected  to  take  an  interest  in 
watching  them  as  they  arose,  and  in  striving  to  determine 
whether  they  were  linked  together  by  the  ordinary  associative 
ties.  I  found,  however,  that  they  were  wholly  independent  of 
each  other.  Curious  to  know  whether  the  will  exerted  any 
power  over  them,  I  set  myself  to  try  whether  I  could  not  con- 
jure up  a  death's  head  as  one  of  the  series ;  but  what  rose 
instead  was  a  cheerful  parlor  fire,  bearing  atop  a  tea-kettle ; 
and  as  the  picture  faded  and  then  vanished,  it  was  succeeded 
by  a  gorgeous  cataract,  in  which  the  white  foam,  at  first 
strongly  relieved  against  the  dark  rock  over  which  it  fell,  soon 
exhibited  a  deep  tinge  of  sulphurous  blue,  and  then  came 
dashing  down  in  one  frightful  sheet  of  blood.  The  great  sin- 
gularity of  the  vision  served  to  freshen  recollection,  and  I  de- 
tected in  the  strange  cataract  every  line  and  tint  of  the  water- 
fall in  the  incantation  scene  in  "  Der  Freischutz"  which  I  had 
witnessed  in  the  Theatre  Royal  of  Edinburgh,  with  certainly 
no  very  particular  interest,  so  long  before.  There  are,  I  suspect, 
provinces  in  the  philosophy  of  mind  into  which  the  metaphy- 
sicians have  not  yet  entered.  Of  that  accessible  storehouse  in 
which  the  memories  of  past  events  lie  arranged  and  taped  up, 
they  appear  to  know  a  good  deal ;  but  of  a  mysterious  cabinet 
of  daguerreotype  pictures,  of  which,  though  fast  locked  up  on 
ordinary  occasions,  disease  sometimes  flings  the  door  ajar,  they 
weem  to  knov  nothing. 


OE.   THE  STOKY  OP   MY  EDUCATION.  333 


CHAPTER  XYI 


4  Let  not  this  weak,  unknowing  hand, 
Presume  thy  bolts  to  throw." 

Pope. 


The  great  fires  of  the  Parliament  Close  and  the  High  Street 
were  events  of  this  winter.  A  countryman,  who  had  left  town 
when  the  old  spire  of  the  Tron  Church  was  blazing  like  a 
torch,  and  the  large  group  of  buildings  nearly  opposite  the 
Cross  still  enveloped  in  flame  from  ground-floor  to  roof-tree, 
passed  our  work-shed,  a  little  after  two  o'clock,  and,  telling  us 
what  he  had  seen,  remarked  that,  if  the  conflagration  went  on 
as  it  was  doing,  we  would  have,  as  our  next  season's  employ- 
ment, the  Old  Town  of  Edinburgh  to  rebuild.  And  as  the 
evening  closed  over  our  labors,  we  went  in  to  town  in  a  body, 
to  see  the  fires  that  promised  to  do  so  much  for  us.  The  spire 
had  burnt  out,  and  we  could  but  catch  between  us  and  the 
darkened  sky,  the  square  abrupt  outline  of  the  masonry  atop 
that  had  supported  the  wooden  broach,  whence,  only  a  few 
hours  before,  Fergusson's  bell  had  descended  in  a  molten 
shower.  The  flames,  too,  in  the  upper  group  of  buildings 
were  restricted  to  the  lower  stories,  and  flared  fitfuily  on  the 
tall  forms  and  bright  swords  of  the  dragoons,  drawn  from  the 
neighboring  barracks,  as  they  rode  up  and  down  the  middle 
space  ;  or  gleamed  athwart  the  street  on  groupes  of  wretched- 
looking  women  and  ruffian  men,  who  seemed  scanning  with 


334 

greedy  eyes  the  still  unremoved  heaps  of  household  goods 
rescued  from  the  burning  tenements.  The  first  figure  that 
caught  my  eye  was  a  singularly  ludicrous  one.  Removed 
from  the  burning  mass  by  but  the  thickness  of  a  wall,  there 
was  a  barber's  shop  brilliantly  lighted  with  gas,  the  uncur- 
tained window  of  which  permitted  the  spectators  outside  to 
see  whatever  was  going  on  in  the  interior.  The  barber  was 
as  busily  at  work  as  if  he  was  a  hundred  miles  from  the 
scene  of  danger,  though  the  engines  at  the  time  were  playing 
against  the  outside  of  his  gable  wall ;  and  the  immediate  sub- 
ject under  his  hands,  as  my  eye  rested  upon  him,  was  an  im- 
mensely fat  old  fellow,  on  whose  round  bald  forehead  and 
ruddy  cheeks  the  perspiration,  occasioned  by  the  oven-like 
heat  of  the  place,  was  standing  out  in  huge  drops,  and  whose 
vast  mouth,  widely  opened  to  accommodate  the  man  of  the 
razor,  gave  to  his  countenance  such  an  expression  as  I  have 
sometimes  seen  in  grotesque  Gothic  heads  of  that  age  of  art 
in  which  the  ecclesiastical  architect  began  to  make  sport  of 
his  religion.  The  next  object  that  presented  itself  was,  how- 
ever, of  a  more  sobering  description.  A  poor  working  man, 
laden  with  his  favorite  piece  of  furniture,  a  glass-fronted  press 
or  cupboard,  which  he  had  succeeded  in  rescuing  from  his 
burning  dwelling,  was  emerging  from  one  of  the  lanes,  fol- 
lowed by  his  wife,  when,  striking  his  foot  against  some  ob- 
stacle in  the  way,  or  staggering  from  the  too  great  weight  of 
his  load,  he  tottered  against  a  projecting  corner,  and  the  glazed 
door  was  driven  in  with  a  crash.  There  was  hopeless  misery 
in  the  wailing  cry  of  his  wife, — "  Oh,  ruin,  ruin  ! — it's  lost 
too  !"  Nor  was  his  own  despairing  response  less  sad  : — "Aye, 
aye,  puir  lassie,  its  a'  at  an  end  noo."  Curious  as  it  may  seem, 
the  wild  excitement  of  the  scene  had  at  first  rather  exhilarated 
than  depressed  my  spirits ;  but  the  incident  of  the  glass  cup- 
board served  to  awaken  the  proper  feeling ;  and  as  I  came 
more  in  contact  with  the  misery  of  the  catastrophe,  and 
marked  the  groups  of  shivering  houseless  creatures  that 
watched  beside  the  broken  fragments  of  their  stuff,  I  saw 
what  a  dire  calamity  a  great  fire  really  is.     Nearly  two  hun 


335 

dred  families  were  already  at  this  time  cast  homeless  into  the 
streets.  Shortly  before  quitting  the  scene  of  the  conflagration 
for  the  country,  I  passed  along  a  common  stair,  which  led  from 
the  Parliament  Close  towards  the  Cowgate,  through  a  tall  old 
domicile,  eleven  storeys  in  height,  and  I  afterwards  remem- 
bered that  the  passage  was  occupied  by  a  smouldering  oppress- 
ive vapor,  which,  from  the  direction  of  the  wind,  could 
scarce  have  been  derived  from  the  adjacent  conflagration, 
though  at  the  time,  without  thinking  much  of  the  circum- 
stance, I  concluded  it  might  have  come  creeping  westwards 
on  some  low  cross  current  along  the  narrow  lanes.  In  less 
than  an  hour  after,  that  lofty  tenement  was  wrapped  in  flames, 
from  the  ground  storey  to  more  than  a  hundred  feet  over  its 
tallest  chimneys,  and  about  sixty  additional  families,  its  ten- 
ants, were  cast  into  the  streets  with  the  others.  My  friend 
William  Eoss  afterwards  assured  me,  that  never  had  he  wit- 
nessed anything  equal  in  grandeur  to  this  last  of  the  confla- 
grations. Directly  over  the  sea  of  fire  below,  the  low-browed 
clouds  above  seemed  as  if  charged  with  a  sea  of  blood,  that 
lightened  and  darkened  by  fits  as  the  flames  rose  and  fell ;  and 
far  and  wide,  tower  and  spire,  and  tall  house-top,  glared  out 
against  a  background  of  darkness,  as  if  they  had  been  brought 
to  a  red  heat  by  some  great  subterranean,  earth-born  fire,  that 
was  fast  rising  to  wrap  the  entire  city  in  destruction.  The  old 
church  of  St.  Giles,  he  said,  with  the  fantastic  masonry  of  its 
pale  gray  tower,  bathed  in  crimson,  and  that  of  its  dark  rude 
walls  suffused  in  a  bronzed  umber,  and  with  the  red  light 
gleaming  inwards  through  its  huge  mullioned  windows,  and 
flickering  on  its  stone  roof,  formed  one  of  the  most  pictur- 
esque objects  he  had  ever  seen.* 


"  *  The  extreme  picturesqueness  of  these  fires,— in  part  a  consequence  of  the  great 
height  and  peculiar  architecture  of  the  buildings  which  they  destroyed,— caught  the 
nice  eye  o!  Sir  Walter  Scott.  "  I  can  conceive,"  we  find  him  saying,  in  one  of  hia 
letters  of  the  period,  "no  sight  more  grand  or  terrible  than  to  see  these  lofty  build- 
ings on  fire  from  top  to  bottom,  vomiting  out  flames,  like  a  volcano,  from  every 
aperture,  and  finall>  crashing  down,  one  after  another,  into  a:»  abyss  of  Are,  which 


336  MY  SCHOOLS  AND  SCHOOLMASTERS; 

I  sometimes  heard  old  Dr.  Colquhoun  of  Leith  pieach. 
There  were  fewer  authors  among  the  clergy  in  those  days  than 
now ;  and  I  felt  a  special  interest  in  a  living  divine  who  had 
written  so  good  a  book,  that  my  Uncle  Sandy — no  mean  judge 
in  such  matters — had  assigned  to  it  a  place  in  his  little  theo- 
logical library,  among  the  writings  of  the  great  divines  of  other 
ages.  The  old  man's  preaching  days,  ere  the  winter  of  1824, 
were  well  nigh  done  :  he  could  scarce  make  himself  heard  over 
naif  the  area  of  his  large,  hulking  chapel,  which  was,  how- 
ever, always  less  than  half  filled  ;  but,  though  the  feeble  tones 
teasingly  strained  the  ear,  I  liked  to  listen  to  his  quaintly-at- 
tired but  usually  very  solid  theology  ;  and  found,  as  I  thought, 
more  matter  in  his  discourses  than  in  those  of  men  who  spoke 
louder  and  in  a  flashier  style.  The  worthy  man,  however,  did 
me  a  mischief  at  this  time.  There  had  been  a  great  Musical 
Festival  held  in  Edinburgh  about  three  weeks  previous  to  the 
conflagration,  at  which  oratorios  were  performed  in  the  ordi- 
nary pagan  style,  in  which  amateurs  play  at  devotion,  without 
even  professing  to  feel  it ;  and  the  Doctor,  in  his  first  sermon 
after  the  great  fires,  gave  serious  expression  to  the  conviction, 
that  they  were  judgments  sent  upon  Edinburgh,  to  avenge  the 
profanity  of  its  Musical  Festival.  Edinburgh  had  sinned,  he 
said,  and  Edinburgh  was  now  punished  ;  and  it  was  according 
to  the  Divine  economy,  he  added,  that  judgments  administered 
exactly  after  the  manner  of  the  infliction  which  we  had  just 
witnessed  should  fall  upon  cities  and  kingdoms.  I  liked  the 
reasoning  very  ill.  I  knew  only  two  ways  in  which  God's 
judgments  could  be  determined  to  be  really  such, — either 
through  direct  revelation  from  God  himself,  or  in  those  cases 
in  which  they  take  place  so  much  in  accordance  with  His 
fixed  laws,  and  in  such  relation  to  the  offence  or  crime  visited 


resembled  nothing  but  hell ;  for  there  were  vaults  of  wine  and  spirits  which  sent 
up  huge  jets  of  flames  whenever  they  were  called  into  activity  by  the  fall  of  these 
massive  fragments,  between  the  corner  of  the  Parliament  Square  and  the  Ttob 
Church,  all  is  destroyed  excepting  some  new  buildings  at  the  lower  extremity." 


OR,    THE   STORY   OF   MY   EDUCATION.  337 

in  tiem  by  punishment,  that  man,  simply  by  the  exercise  of 
his  rational  faculties,  and  reasoning  from  cause  to  effect,  as  is 
his  nature,  can  determine  them  for  himself.  And  the  great 
Edinburgh  fires  had  come  under  neither  category.  God  did 
not  reveal  that  he  had  punished  the  tradesmen  and  mechanics 
of  the  High  Street  for  the  musical  sins  of  the  lawyers  and  land- 
owners of  Abercrombie  Place  and  Charlotte  Square ;  nor  could 
any  natural  relation  be  established  between  the  oratorios  in  the 
Parliament  House  or  the  concerts  in  the  Theatre  Royal,  and 
the  conflagrations  opposite  the  Cross  or  at  the  top  of  the  Tron 
Church  steeple.  All  that  could  be  proven  in  the  case  were 
the  facts  of  the  festival  and  of  the  fires ;  and  the  farther 
fact,  that,  so  far  as  could  be  ascertained,  there  was  no  visi- 
ble connection  between  them,  and  that  it  was  not  the  people 
who  had  joined  in  the  one  that  had  suffered  from  the  others. 
And  the  Doctor's  argument  seemed  to  be  the  perilously  loose 
one,  that  as  God  had  sometimes  of  old  visited  cities  and  na- 
tions with  judgments  which  had  no  apparent  connection  with 
the  sins  punished,  and  which  could  not  be  recognized  as  judg- 
ments had  not  He  himself  told  that  such  they  were,  the  Edin- 
burgh fires,  of  which  he  had  told  nothing,  might  be  properly 
regarded — seeing  that  they  had  in  the  same  way  no  connec- 
tion with  the  oratorios,  and  had  wrrought  no  mischief  to  the 
people  who  had  patronized  the  oratorios — as  special  judg- 
ments on  the  oratorios.  The  good  old  Papist  had  said,  "  1 
believe  because  it  is  impossible."  What  the  Doctor  in  this 
instance  seemed  to  say  was,  "  I  believe  because  it  is  not  in  the 
least  likely."  If,  I  argued,  Dr.  Colquhoun's  own  house  and 
library  had  been  burnt,  he  would  no  doubt  very  properly  have 
deemed  the  infliction  a  great  trial  to  himself;  but  on  what 
principal  could  he  have  further  held  that  it  was  not  only  a 
trial  to  himself,  but  also  a  judgment  on  his  neighbor  1  If  we 
must  not  believe  that  the  falling  of  the  tower  of  Siloam  was  a 
special  visitation  on  the  sins  of  the  poor  men  whom  it  crushed, 
now,  or  on  wdiat  grounds,  are  we  to  believe  that  it  was  a  spe- 
cial visitation  on  the  sins  of  the  men  whom  it  did  not  in  the 
least  injure  1     I  fear  I  remembered  Dr.  Colquhoun's  remarks 


338 

on  the  fire  better  than  aught  else  I  ever  heard  from  him  ;  nay, 
I  must  add,  that  nothing  had  I  ever  found  in  the  writings  of 
the  sceptics  that  had  a  worse  effect  on  my  mind  ;  and  I  now 
mention  the  circumstance  to  show  how  sober  in  applications 
of  the  kind,  in  an  age  like  the  present,  a  theologian  should  be. 
It  was  some  time  ere  I  forgot  the  ill  savor  of  that  dead  fly ; 
and  it  was  to  beliefs  of  a  serious  and  very  important  class 
that  it  served  for  a  time  to  impart  its  own  doubtful  character. 
But  from  the  minister  whose  chapel  I  oftenest  attended,  I 
was  little  in  danger  of  having  my  beliefs  unsettled  by  reason- 
ings of  this  stumbling  cast.  "  Be  sure,"  said  both  my  uncles, 
as  I  was  quitting  Cromarty  for  the  south, — "  be  sure  you  go 
and  hear  Dr.  M'Crie."  And  so  Dr.  M'Crie  I  did  go  and 
hear ;  and  not  once  or  twice,  but  often.  The  biographer  of 
Knox, — to  employ  the  language  in  which  Wordsworth  de- 
scribes the  humble  hero  of  the  "  Excursion," — 

"  Was  a  man 
Whom  no  one  could  have  passed  without  remark." 

And  on  first  attending  his  church,  I  found  that  I  had  unwit- 
tingly seen  him  before,  and  that  without  remark  I  had  not 
passed  him.  I  had  extended  one  of  my  usual  evening  walks, 
shortly  after  commencing  work  atNiddry,  in  the  direction  of 
the  southern  suburb  of  Edinburgh,  and  was  sauntering  through 
one  of  the  green  lanes  of  Liberton,  when  I  met  a  gentleman 
whose  appearance  at  once  struck  me.  He  was  a  singularly 
erect,  spare,  tall  man,  and  bore  about  him  an  air  which, 
neither  wholly  clerical  nor  wholly  military,  seemed  to  be  a 
curious  compound  of  both.  The  countenance  was  pale,  and 
the  expression,  as  I  thought,  somewhat  melancholy  ;  but  an 
air  of  sedate  power  sat  so  palpably  on  every  feature,  that  I 
stood  arrested  as  he  passed,  and  for  half  a  minute  or  so  re- 
mained looking  after  him.  He  wore,  over  a  suit  of  black,  a 
brown  great-coat,  with  the  neck  a  good  deal  whitened  by  pow- 
der, and  the  rim  of  the  hat  behind,  which  was  slightly  turned 
up,  bore  a  similar  stain.  "  There  is  mark  about  that  old- 
fashioned  man,"  I  said  to  myself:  "  who  or  what  can  he  be?" 


OK,    THE   STORY   OF   MY   EDUCATION.  339 

Curiously  enough,  the  apparent  combination  of  the  military 
and  the  clerical  in  his  gait  and  air  suggested  to  me  Sir  Richard 
Steele's  story,  in  the  Tattler,"  of  the  old  officer  who,  acting 
in  the  double  capacity  of  major  and  chaplain  to  his  regiment, 
challenged  a  young  man  for  blasphemy,  and,  after  disarming, 
would  not  take  him  to  mercy  until  he  had  first  begged  pardon 
of  God  upon  his  knees  on  the  duelling-ground,  for  the  irrev- 
erence with  which  he  had  treated  His  name.  My  curiosity 
regarding  the  stranger  gentleman  was  soon  gratified.  Next 
Saturday  I  attended  the  Doctor's  chapel,  and  saw  the  tall,  spare, 
clerico-military  looking  man  in  the  pulpit.  I  have  a  good 
deal  of  faith  in  the  military  air,  when,  in  the  character  of 
a  natural  trait,  I  find  it  strongly  marking  men  who  never 
served  in  the  army.  I  have  not  yet  seen  it  borne  by  a  civilian 
who  had  not  in  him  at  least  the  elements  of  the  soldier ;  nor 
can  I  doubt  that,  had  Dr.  M'Crie  been  a  Scotch  covenanter  of 
the  times  of  Charles  II.,  the  insurgents  at  Bothwell  would 
have  had  what  they  sadly  wanted, — a  general.  The  shrewd 
sense  of  his  discourses  had  great  charms  for  me;  and,  though 
not  a  flashy,  nor,  in  the  ordinary  sense  of  the  term,  even  an 
eloquent  preacher,  there  were  none  of  the  other  Edinburgh 
clergy  his  contemporaries  to  whom  1  found  I  could  listen  with 
greater  profit  or  satisfaction.  A  simple  incident  which  oc- 
curred during  my  first  morning  attendance  at  his  chapel, 
strongly  impressed  me  with  a  sense  of  his  sagacity.  There 
was  a  great  deal  of  coughing  in  the  place,  the  effect  of  a  recent 
change  of  weather ;  and  the  Doctor,  whose  voice  was  not  a  strong 
one,  and  who  seemed  somewhat  annoyed  by  the  ruthless  inter- 
ruptions, stopping  suddenly  short  in  the  middle  of  his  argument, 
made  a  dead  pause.  When  people  are  taken  greatly  by  sur- 
prise, they  cease  to  cough, — a  circumstance  on  which  he  had 
evidently  calculated.  Every  eye  wras  now  turned  towards  him, 
and  for  a  full  minute  so  dead  was  the  silence,  that  one  might 
have  heard  a  pin  drop.  "  I  see,  my  friends,"  said  the  Doctor, 
resuming  speech,  with  a  suppressed  smile, — "  I  see  you  can 
be  all  quiet  enough  when  I  am  quiet."  There  was  not  a  little 
genuine  strategy  in  the  rebuke ;  and  as  cough  lies  a  good  deal 


340  MY  SCHOOLS  AND  SCHOOLMASTERS  ; 

more  under  the  influence  of  the  will  than  most  coughers  sup- 
pose, such  was  its  effect,  that  during  the  rest  of  the  day  there 
was  not  a  tithe  of  the  previous  coughing. 

The  one-roomed  cottage  which  I  shared  with  its  three  other 
inmates,  did  not  present  all  the  possible  conveniences  for  study ; 
but  it  had  a  little  table  in  a  corner,  at  which  I  contrived  to 
write  a  good  deal ;  and  my  book-shelf  already  exhibited  from 
twenty  to  thirty  volumes,  picked  up  on  Saturday  evenings  at 
the  book-stalls  of  the  city,  and  which  were  all  accessions  to 
my  little  library.  I,  besides,  got  a  few  volumes  to  read  from 
my  friend  William  Ross,  and  a  few  more  through  my  work, 
fellow  Cha ;  and  so  my  rate  of  acquirement  in  book-knowl- 
ledge,  if  not  equal  to  that  of  some  former  years,  at  least  con- 
siderably exceeded  what  it  had  been  in  the  previous  season. 
which  I  had  spent  in  the  Highlands,  and  during  which  I  had 
perused  only  three  volumes, — one  of  the  three  a  slim  volume 
of  slim  poems,  by  a  lady,  and  the  other,  the  rather  curious 
than  edifying  work,  "  Presbyterian  Eloquence  Displayed." 
The  cheap  literature  had  not  yet  been  called  into  existence ; 
and,  without  in  the  least  undervaluing  its  advantages,  it  was, 
I  dare  say,  better,  on  the  whole,  as  a  mental  exercise,  and 
greatly  better  in  the  provision  which  it  made  for  the  future,  that 
I  should  have  to  urge  my  way  through  the  works  of  our  best 
writers  in  prose  and  verse, — works  which  always  made  an 
impression  on  the  memory, — than  that  I  should  have  been 
engaged,  instead,  in  picking  up  odds  and  ends  of  information 
from  loose  essays,  the  hasty  productions  of  men  too  little 
vigorous,  or  too  little  at  leisure,  to  impress  upon  their  writings 
the  stamp  of  their  own  individuality.  In  quiet  moonlight 
nights  I  found  it  exceedingly  pleasant  to  saunter  all  alone 
through  the  Niddry  woods.  Moonlight  gives  to  even  leafless 
groves  the  charms  of  full  foliage,  and  conceals  tameness  of 
outline  in  a  landscape.  I  found  it  singularly  agreeable,  too,  to 
listen,  from  a  solitude  so  profound  as  that  which  a  short  walk 
secured  to  me,  to  the  distant  bells  of  the  city  ringing  out,  as 
the  clock  struck  eight,  the  old  curfew  peal ;  and  to  mark,  from 
under  the  interlacing  boughs  of  a  long-arched  vista,  the  inter- 


d41 

mittent  gleam  of  the  Inchkeith  light  now  brightening  and  now 
fading,  as  the  Ian  thorn  revolved.  In  short,  the  winter  passed 
not  unpleasantly  away  :  I  had  now  nothing  to  annoy  me  in  the 
work-shed ;  and  my  only  serious  care  arose  from  my  unlucky 
house  in  Leith,  for  which  I  found  myself  summoned  one  morn- 
ing  by  an  officer-looking  man,  to  pay  nearly  three  pounds, — 
the  last  instalment  which  I  owred,  I  wTas  told,  as  one  of  the 
heritors  of  the  place,  for  its  fine  new  church.  I  must  confess 
I  was  wicked  enough  to  wish,  on  this  occasion,  that  the  prop- 
erty on  the  Coal-hill  had  been  included  in  the  judgment  on 
the  Musical  Festival.  But  shortly  after,  not  less  to  my  as- 
tonishment than  delight,  I  was  informed  by  Mr.  Veitch  that 
he  had  at  length  found  a  purchaser  for  my  house ;  and,  after 
getting  myself  served  heir  to  my  father  before  the  court  of 
the  Canongate,  and  paying  a  larger  arrear  of  feu-duty  to  that 
venerable  corporation,  in  which  I  had  to  recognize  my  feudal 
superior,  I  got  myself  as  surely  dissevered  from  the  Coal-hill 
as  paper  and  parchment  could  do  it,  and  pocketed,  in  virtue 
of  the  transaction,  a  balance  of  about  fifty  pounds.  As  nearly 
as  I  could  calculate  on  what  the  property  had  cost  us,  from 
first  to  last,  the  composition  which  it  paid  was  one  of  about 
five  shillings  in  the  pound.  And  such  wras  the  concluding 
passage  in  the  history  of  a  legacy  which  threatened  for  a  time 
to  be  the  ruin  of  the  family.  When  I  last  passed  along  the 
Coal-hill,  I  saw  my  umquhile  house  existing  as  a  bit  of  dingy 
wall,  a  single  storey  in  height,  and  perforated  by  three  narrow 
old-fashioned  doors,  jealously  boarded  up,  and  apparently,  as 
in  the  days  when  it  was  mine,  of  no  manner  of  use  in  the 
world.  I  trust,  however,  it  is  no  longer  the  positive  mischief 
to  its  proprietor  that  it  was  to  me. 

The  busy  season  had  now  fairly  commenced  :  wages  were 
fast  mounting  up  to  the  level  of  the  former  year,  which  they 
ultimately  overtopped ;  and  employment  had  become  very 
abundant.  I  found,  however,  that  it  might  be  well  for  me  to 
return  home  for  a  few  months.  The  dust  of  the  stone  which  I 
had  been  hewing  for  the  last  two  years  had  begun  to  affect  my 
lungs,  as  they  had  been  affected  in  the  last  autumn  of  my  ap- 


U2 

prenticeshi]. ,  but  much  more  severely;  and  I  was  too  palpably 
sinking  in  flesh  and  strength  to  render  it  safe  for  me  to  en- 
counter the  consequences  of  another  season  of  hard  work  as  a 
stone-cutter.  From  the  stage  of  the  malady  at  which  I  had 
already  arrived,  poor  workmen,  unable  to  do  what  I  did,  throw 
themselves  loose  from  their  employment,  and  sink  in  six  or 
eight  months  into  the  grave, — some  at  an  earlier,  some  at  a 
later  period  of  life  ;  but  so  general  is  the  affection,  that  few  of 
our  Edinburgh  stone-cutters  pass  their  fortieth  year  unscathed, 
and  not  one  out  of  every  fifty  of  their  number  ever  reaches  his 
forty-fifth.  I  accordingly  engaged  my  passage  for  the  north 
in  an  Inverness  sloop,  and  took  leave  of  my  few  friends, — of 
the  excellent  foreman  of  the  Niddry  squad,  and  of  Cha  and 
John  Wilson,  with  both  of  whom,  notwithstanding  their  oppo- 
site characters,  I  had  become  very  intimate.  Among  the  rest, 
too,  I  took  leave  of  a  paternal  cousin  settled  in  Leith,  the  wife 
of  a  genial-hearted  sailor,  master  of  a  now  wholly  obsolete  type 
of  vessel,  one  of  the  old  Leith  and  London  smacks,  with  a  huge 
single  mast,  massive  and  tall  as  that  of  a  frigate,  and  a  main- 
sail of  a  quarter  of  an  acre.  I  had  received  much  kindness 
from  my  cousin,  who,  besides  her  relationship  to  my  father, 
had  been  a  contemporary  and  early  friend  of  my  mother's ; 
and  my  welcome  from  the  master  her  husband — one  of  the 
best-natured  men  I  ever  knew — used  always  to  be  one  of 
the  heartiest.  And  after  parting  from  Cousin  Marshall,  I 
mustered  up  resolution  enough  to  call  on  yet  another  cousin. 
Cousin  William,  the  eldest  son  of  my  Sutherlandshire  aunt, 
had  been  for  some  years  settled  in  Edinburgh,  first  as  an  upper 
clerk  and  manager, — for,  after  his  failure  as  a  merchant,  he 
had  to  begin  the  world  anew ;  and  now,  in  the  speculation 
year,  he  had  succeeded  in  establishing  a  business  for  himself, 
which  bore  about  it  a  hopeful  and  promising  air  so  long  as  the 
over-genial  season  lasted,  but  fell,  with  many  a  more  deeply- 
rooted  establishment,  in  the  tempest  which  followed.  On 
quitting  the  north,  I  had  been  charged  with  a  letter  for  him 
by  his  father,  which  I  knew,  however,  to  be  wholly  recom- 
mendatory of  myself,  and  so  I  had  failed  to  deliver  it.     Cousin 


OE.   THE  STORY   OF  MY  EDUCATION.  343 

William,  like  Uncle  James,  had  fully  expected  that  was  to 
make  my  way  in  life  in  some  one  of  the  learned  professions ; 
and  as  his  position — though,  as  the  result  unfortunately 
showed,  a  not  very  secure  one — was  considerably  in  advance 
of  mine,  I  kept  aloof  from  him,  in  the  character  of  a  poor  re- 
lation, who  was  quite  as  proud  as  he  was  poor,  and  in  the  be- 
lief that  his  new  friends,  of  whom,  I  understood,  he  had  now 
well  nigh  as  many  as  before,  would  hold  that  the  cousinship 
of  a  mere  working  man  did  him  little  credit.  He  had  learned 
from  home,  however,  that  I  was  in  Edinburgh,  and  had  made 
not  a  few  ineffectual  attempts  to  find  me  out,  of  which  I  had 
heard ;  and  now,  on  forming  my  resolution  to  return  to  the 
north,  I  waited  upon  him  at  his  rooms  in  Ambrose's  Lodgings, 
— at  that  time  possessed  of  a  sort  of  classical  interest,  as  the 
famous  Blackwood  Club,  with  Christopher  North  at  its  head, 
used  to  meet  in  the  hotel  immediately  below.  Cousin  Wil- 
liam had  a  warm  heart,  and  received  me  with  great  kindness, 
though  I  had,  of  course,  to  submit  to  the  scold  which  I  de- 
served ;  and  as  some  young  friends  were  to  look  in  upon  him 
in  the  evening,  he  said,  I  had  to  do,  what  I  would  fain  have 
avoided,  perform  penance,  by  waiting,  on  his  express  invita- 
tion, to  meet  with  them.  They  were,  I  ascertained,  chiefly 
students  of  medicine  and  divinity,  in  attendance  at  the  classes 
of  the  University,  and  not  at  all  the  formidable  sort  of  persons 
I  had  feared  to  meet ;  and  finding  nothing  very  unattainable 
in  their  conversation,  and  as  Cousin  William  made  a  dead  set 
on  me  "  to  bring  me  out,"  I  at  length  ventured  to  mingle  in 
it,  and  found  my  reading  stand  me  in  some  stead.  There  was 
a  meeting,  we  were  told,  that  evening,  in  the  apartment  below, 
of  the  Blackwood  Club.  The  night  I  spent  with  my  cousin 
was,  if  our  information  was  correct,  and  the  Nodes  not  a  mere 
myth,  one  of  the  famous  Nodes  Ambrosiance  ;  and  fain  would 
I  have  seen,  for  but  a  moment,  from  some  quiet  corner,  the 
men  whose  names  fame  had  blown  so  widely  ;  but  I  have  ever 
been  unlucky  in  the  curiosity — though  I  have  always  strongly 
entertained  it — which  has  the  personal  appearance  of  cele- 
brated men  for  its  object.     I  had  ere  now  several  times  lin- 


344 

gered  in  Castle  Street  of  a  Saturday  evening,  opposite  tie  housn 
of  Sir  Walter  Scott,  in  the  hope  of  catching  a  glimpse  of  that 
great  writer  and  genial  man,  but  had  never  been  successful.  I 
could  fain,  too,  have  seen  Hogg  (who  at  the  time  occasionally 
visited  Edinburgh) ;  with  Jeffrey  ;  old  Dugald  Stewart,  who 
still  lived ;  Delta,  and  Professor  Wilson ;  but  I  quitted  the 
place  without  seeing  any  of  them ;  and  ere  I  again  returned 
to  the  capital,  ten  years  after,  death  had  been  busy  in  the  high 
places,  and  the  greatest  of  their  number  was  no  longer  to  be 
seen.  In  short,  Dr.  M'Crie  was  the  only  man  whose  name 
promises  to  live,  of  whose  personal  appearance  I  was  able 
to  carry  away  with  me  at  this  time  a  distinct  image.  Addi 
son  makes  his  Spectator  remark,  rather  in  joke  than  earnest, 
that  "  a  reader  seldom  peruses  a  book  with  pleasure  till  he 
knows  whether  the  writer  of  it  be  a  black  or  a  fair  man,  of 
a  mild  or  choleric  disposition,  married  or  a  bachelor,  with 
other  particulars  of  the  like  nature,  that  conduce  very  much 
to  the  right  understanding  of  an  author."  I  am  inclined  to 
say  nearly  as  much,  without  being  in  the  least  in  joke.  1 
think  I  understand  an  author  all  the  better  for  knowing  ex- 
actly how  he  looked.  I  would  have  to  regard  the  massive 
vehemence  of  the  style  of  Chalmers  as  considerably  less  char- 
acteristic of  the  man,  had  it  been  dissociated  from  the  broad 
chest  and  mighty  structure  of  bone ;  and  the  warlike  spirit 
which  breathes,  in  a  subdued  but  still  very  palpable  form,  in 
the  historical  writings  of  the  elder  M'Crie,  strikes  me  as  sin- 
gularly in  harmony  with  the  military  air  of  this  Presbyterian 
minister  of  the  type  of  Knox  and  Melville.  However  theo- 
logians may  settle  the  meaning  of  the  text,  it  is  one  of  the 
grand  lessons  of  his  waitings,  that  such  of  the  Churches  of 
the  Reformation  as  did  not  "  take  the  sword,  perished  by  the 
word." 

I  was  accompanied  to  the  vessel  by  my  friend  William  Ross, 
from  whom  I,  alas  !  parted  for  the  last  time ;  and,  when  step- 
ping aboard,  Cousin  William,  whom  I  had  scarce  expected  to 
see,  but  who  had  snatched  an  hour  from  business,  and  walked 
down  all  the  way  to  Leith  to  bid  me  farewell,  came  forward 


OR,   THE    STORY  OF   MY   EDUCATION.  345 

to  grasp  me  by  the  hand.  I  am  not  much  disposed  to  quarrel 
with  the  pride  of  the  working  man,  when,  according  to  John- 
son and  Chalmers,  it  is  a  defensive,  not  an  aggressive  pride ; 
hut  it  does  at  times  lead  him  to  be  somewhat  less  than  just  to 
the  better  feelings  of  the  men  who  occupy  places  in  the  scale 
a  little  higher  than  his  own.  Cousin  William  from  whom  I 
had  kept  so  jealously  aloof,  had  a  heart  of  the  finest  water. 
His  after  course  was  rough  and  unprosperous.  After  the  gen- 
era!  crash  of  1825-26,  he  struggled  on  in  London  for  some 
six  or  eight  years,  in  circumstances  of  great  difficulty  ;  and 
then,  receiving  some  subordinate  appointment  in  connection 
with  the  Stipendiary  Magistracy  of  the  West  Indies,  he  sailed, 
for  Jamaica,  where — considerably  turned  of  fifty  at  the  time 
— he  soon  fell  a  victim  to  the  climate. 

In  my  voyage  north,  I  spent  about  half  as  many  days  on 
sea,  between  Leith  Roads  and  the  Souters  of  Cromarty,  as  the 
Cunard  steamers  now  spend  in  crossing  the  Atlantic.  I  had 
taken  a  cabin  passage,  not  caring  to  subject  my  weakened 
lungs  to  the  exposure  of  a  steerage  one  ;  but  during  the  seven 
days  of  thick,  foggy  mornings,  clear  moonlight  nights,  and 
almost  unbroken  calms,  both  night  and  morning,  in  which 
we  tided  our  slow  way  north,  I  was  much  in  the  forecastle 
with  the  men,  seeing  how  sailors  lived,  and  ascertaining  what 
they  were  thinking  about,  and  how.  We  had  rare  narratives 
at  nights, — 

"Wonderful  stories  of  battle  and  wreck, 
That  were  told  by  the  men  of  the  watch." 

Some  of  the  crew  had  been  voyagers  in  their  time  to  distant 
parts  of  the  world  ;  and  though  no  existence  can  be  mo~e  mo- 
notonous than  the  every -day  life  of  the  seaman,  the  profession 
has  always  its  bits  of  striking  incident,  that,  when  strung 
together,  impart  to  it  an  air  of  interest  which  its  ordinary  de- 
tails sadly  want,  and  which  lures  but  to  disappoint  the  young 
lads  of  a  romantic  cast  who  are  led  to  make  choice  of  it  in 
its  presumed  character  as  a  continued  series  of  stirring  events 
and  exciting  adventures.     What,  however,  struck  me  as  cu 


346  MY  SCHOOLS  AND  SCHOOLMASTERS; 

rious  in  the  narratives  of  my  companions,  was  the  large  mix- 
ture of  the  supernatural  which  they  almost  always  exhibited. 
The  story  of  Jack  Grant  the  mate,  given  in  an  early  chapter, 
may  be  regarded  as  not  inadequately  representative  of  the 
sailor  stories  which  were  told  on  deck  and  forecastle,  along  at 
le;a  '  +he  northern  coasts  of  Scotland,  nearly  thirty  years  later. 
That  of  peril  which  casts  the  seaman  much  at  the  mercy 

of  every  rough  gale  and  lee-shore,  and  in  which  his  calcula- 
tions regarding  ultimate  results  must  be  always  very  doubtful, 
has  a  strong  tendency  to  render  him  superstitious.  He  is  more 
removed,  too,  than  the  landsman  of  his  education  and  stand- 
ing, from  the  influence  of  general  opinion,  and  the  mayhap 
over-sceptical  teaching  of  the  Press ;  and,  as  a  consequence 
of  their  position  and  circumstances,  I  found,  at  this  period, 
seamen  of  the  generation  to  which  I  myself  belonged  as  firm 
believers  in  wraiths,  ghosts,  and  death-warnings,  as  the  land- 
ward contemporaries  of  my  grandfather  had  been  sixty  years 
before.  A  series  of  well-written  nautical  tales  had  appeared 
shortly  previous  to  this  time  in  one  of  the  metropolitan  month 
lies, — the  London  Magazine,  if  I  rightly  remember  ;  and 
was  now  interested  to  find  in  one  of  the  sailors'  stories,  the 
original  of  decidedly  the  best  of  their  number, — "  The  Doomed 
Man."  The  author  of  the  series, — a  Mr.  Hamilton,  it  was  said, 
who  afterwards  became  an  Irvingite  teacher,  and  grew  too  scru 
pulous  to  exercise  in  fiction  a  very  pleasing  pen,  though  he 
continued  to  employ,  as  a  portrait-painter,  a  rather  indifferent 
pencil, — had  evidently  sought  such  opportunities  of  listening 
to  sailors'  stories  as  those  on  which  I  had  at  this  time  thrust 
myself.  Very  curious  materials  for  fiction  may  be  found  in 
this  way  by  the  litterateur.  It  must  be  held  that  Sir  Walter 
Scott  was  no  incompetent  judge  of  the  capabilities,  for  the 
purposes  of  the  novelist,  of  a  piece  of  narrative ;  and  yet  wt 
find  him  saying  of  the  story  told  by  a  common  sailor  to  his 
friend  William  Clerk,  which  he  records  in  the  "  Letters  on 
Demonology  and  Witchcraft,"  that  "  the  tale,  properly 
managed,  might  have  made  the  fortune  of  a  romancer." 
At  times  by  day, — for  the  sailors'  stories  were  stories  of  the 


UK,    THE   STORY   OF   MY   EDUCATION.  347 

night, — I  found  interesting  companionship  in  the  society  of  a 
young  student  of  divinity,  one  of  the  passengers,  who,  though 
a  lad  of  parts  and  acquirements,  did  not  deem  it  beneath  him 
to  converse  on  literary  subjects  with  a  working  man  in  pale 
moleskin,  and  with  whom  I  did  not  again  meet  until  many 
years  after,  when  we  were  both  actively  engaged  in  prosecut- 
ing the  same  quarrel, — he  as  one  of  the  majority  of  ty  res- 
bytery  of  Auchterarder,  and  I  as  editor  of  the  leading  news- 
paper of  the  Non-Intrusion  party.  Perhaps  the  respected  Free 
Church  minister  of  North  Leith  may  be  still  able  to  call  to 
memory, — not,  of  course,  the  subjects,  but  the  fact,  of  our  dis- 
cussions on  literature  and  the  belles  lettres  at  this  time  ;  and 
that,  on  asking  me  one  morning  whether  I  had  not  been,  ac- 
cording to  Burns,  "  crooning  to  mysel',  "  when  on  deck  during 
the  previous  evening,  what  seemed  from  the  cadence  to  be 
verse,  I  ventured  to  submit  to  him,  as  my  night's  work,  a  few 
descriptive  stanzas.  And,  as  forming  in  some  sort  a  memorial 
of  our  voyage,  and  in  order  that  my  friendly  critic  may  be 
enabled,  after  the  lapse  of  considerably  more  than  a  quarter 
of  a  century,  to  review  his  judgment  respecting  them,  I  now 
submit  them  to  the  reader  : — 

STANZAS  WRITTEN  AT  SEA. 

Joy  of  the  poet's  soul,  I  court  thy  aid ; 


Around  our  vessel  heaves  the  midnight  wave ; 
The  cheerless  moon  sinks  in  the  western  sky  ; 
Reigns  hreezeless  silence! — in  her  ocean  cave 
The  mermaid  rests,  while  her  fond  lover  nigh, 
Marks  the  pale  star-beams  as  they  fall  from  high, 
Gilding  with  tremulous  light  tier  couch  of  sleep 
Why  smile  incred'IousV  the  rapt  Muse's  eye 
Through  earth's  dark  caves,  o'er  heaven's  fair  plains,  can  sweep 
Can  range  each  hidden  cell,  where  toils  the  unfathom'd  deep 

On  ocean's  craggy  floor,  beneath  the  shade 
Of  bushy  rock-weed,  tangled,  dusk,  and  brown, 
She  sees  the  wreck  of  founder'd  vessel  laid, 
In  slimy  silence,  many  a  fathom  down 
From  where  the  star-beam  trembles  ;  o'er  it  thrown 
16 


848 


Are  heap'd  the  treasures  rren  have  died  to  gain, 
And  in  sad  mockery  of  Ihe  parting  groan. 
That  bubbled  'mid  Uie  wild  unpitying  ma.n, 
Quick  gushing  o'er  the  bones,  the  restless  tides  ccmp  ain 

Gloomy  and  wide  rolls  the  sepulchral  sea, 
Grave  of  my  kindred,  of  my  sire  the  grave  ! 
Perchance,  where  now  he  sleeps,  a  space  for  me 
Is  marked  by  Fate  beneath  the  deep  green  wave. 
It  well  may  be !    Poor  bosom,  why  dost  heave 
Thus  wild  !    O,  many  a  care,  troublous  and  dark, 
On  earth  stands  thee  still ;  the  Mermaid's  cave 
Grief  haunts  not ;  sure  'twere  pleasant  there  to  mark 
Serene,  at  noon-tide  hour,  the  sailor's  passing  bark. 

Sure  it  were  p'easant  through  the  vasty  deep, 
When  on  its  bosom  plays  the  golden  beam, 
When  headlong  speed  by  bower  and  cave  to  sweep; 
When  flame  the  waters  round  with  emerald  gleam, — 
When,  borne  from  high  by  tides  and  gales,  the  scream 
Of  sea-mew  sofien'd  falls, — when  bright  and  gay 
The  crimson  weeds,  proud  ocean's  pendants,  stream 
From  trophied  wrecks  and  rock-towers  darkly  gray, — 
Through  scenes  so  strangely  fair  'twere  pleasant,  sure,  to  stif» 

Why  this  strange  thought  ?    If,  in  that  ocean  laid, 
The  ear  would  cease  to  hear,  the  eye  to  see, 
Though  sights  and  sounds  like  these  circled  my  bed, 
Wakeless  and  heavy  would  my  slumbers  be: 
Though  the  mild  softened  sun-light  beam'd  on  me 
(If  a  dull  heap  of  bones  retain'd  my  name, 
That  bleach'd  or  blacken'd  'mid  the  wasteful  sea), 
Its  radiance  all  unseen,  its  golden  beam 

In  vain  through  coral  groves  or  emerald  roofs  might  stream. 
Yet  dwells  a  spirit  in  this  earthy  frame 
Which  oceans  cannot  quench  nor  Time  destroy; — 
A  deathless,  fadeless  ray,  a  heavenly  flame, 
That  pure  shall  rise  when  fails  each  base  alloy 
That  earth  instils,  dark  grief,  or  baseless  joy: 
Then  shall  the  ocean's  secrets  meet  its  sight ; —  . 

For  I  do  hold  that  happy  souls  enjoy 
A  vast  all-reaching  range  of  angel  flight, 

Frwm  the  fair  source  of  day,  even  to  the  gates  of  night. 

Now  night's  dark  veil  is  rent ;  on  yonder  laud, 

That  blue  and  distant  rises  o'er  the  main, 

I  see  the  purple  sky  of  mom  expand, 

Scattering  the  gloom.    Then  cease  my  feeble  strain  : 

When  darkness  reigned,  thy  whisperings  soothed  my  pa:  n,— 


OK,   THE   STORY  OF  MY  EDUCATION.  349 

The  pain  by  weariness  and  languor  bred. 
But  now  my  eyes  shall  greet  a  lovelier  scene 
Than  fancy  pictured  :  from  the  dark  green  bed 
Soon  shall  ihe  orb  of  day  exalt  his  glorious  head. 

I  found  my  two  uncles,  Cousin  George,  and  several  other 
friends  and  relations,  waiting  for  me  on  the  Cromarty  beach ; 
and  was  soon  as  happy  among  them  as  a  man  suffering  a  good 
deal  from  debility,  but  not  much  from  positive  pain,  could 
well  be.  When  again,  about  ten  years  after  this  time,  I  visited 
the  south  of  Scotland,  it  was  to  receive  the  instructions  neces- 
sary to  qualify  me  for  a  bank  accountant ;  and  when  I  revisit- 
ed it  at  a  still  later  period,  it  was  to  undertake  the  manage- 
ment of  a  metropolitan  newspaper.  In  both  these  instances 
I  mingled  with  a  different  sort  of  persons  from  those  with 
whom  I  had  come  in  contact  in  the  years  1824-25.  And  in 
now  taking  leave  of  the  lowlier  class,  I  may  be  permitted  to 
make  a  few  general  remarks  regarding  them. 

It  is  a  curious  change  which  has  taken  place  in  this  country 
during  the  last  hundred  years.  Up  till  the  times  of  the  Rebel- 
lion of  1745,  and  a  little  later,  it  was  its  remoter  provinces  that 
formed  its  dangerous  portions  ;  and  the  effective  strongholds 
from  which  its  advance-guards  of  civilization  and  good  order 
gradually  gained  upon  old  anarchy  and  barbarism,  were  its 
great  towns.  We  are  told  by  ecclesiastical  historians,  that  in 
Rome,  after  the  age  of  Constantine,  the  term  villager  (Pagus) 
came  to  be  regarded  as  synonymous  with  heathen,  from  the 
circumstance  that  the  worshippers  of  the  gods  were  then  chiefly 
to  be  found  in  remote  country  places  ;  and  we  know  that  in 
Scotland  the  Reformation  pursued  a  course  exactly  resembling 
that  of  Christianity  itself  in  the  old  Roman  world  :  it  began 
in  the  larger  and  more  influential  towns  ;  and  it  was  in  the 
omoter  country  districts  that  the  displaced  religion  lingered 
longest,  and  found  its  most  efficient  champions  and  allies. 
Edinburgh,  Glasgow,  Perth,  St.  Andrew's,  Dundee,  were  all 
Protestant,  and  sent  out  their  well-taught  burghers  to  serve 
in  the  army  of  the  Lords  of  the  Congregation,  when  Huntly 
ard  Hamilton  were  arming  their  vassals  to  contend  for  the  ob- 


350 

solete  faii.h.  In  a  later  age  the  accessible  Lowlands  were  em- 
bued  with  an  evangelistic  Presbyterianism,  when  the  more 
mountainous  and  inaccessible  provinces  of  the  country  were 
still  in  a  condition  to  furnish,  in  what  was  known  as  the  High- 
land Host,  a  dire  instrument  of  persecution.  Even  as  late  as 
the  middle  of  the  last  century,  "Sabbath,"  according  to  a 
popular  writer,  "  never  get  aboon  the  Pass  of  Killicrankie  ;" 
and  the  Stuarts,  exiled  for  their  adherence  to  Popery,  con- 
tinued to  found  almost  their  sole  hopes  of  restoration  on  the 
swords  of  their  co-religionists  the  Highlanders.  During  the 
last  hundred  years,  however,  this  old  condition  of  matters  has 
been  strangely  reversed ;  and  it  is  in  the  great  towns  that 
Paganism  now  chiefly  prevails.  In  at  least  their  lapsed 
classes, — a  rapidly-increasing  proportion  of  their  population, 
— it  is  those  cities  of  our  country  which  first  caught  the  light 
of  religion  and  learning,  that  have  become  pre-eminently  its 
dark  parts ;  just,  if  I  may  employ  the  comparison,  as  it  is 
those  portions  of  the  moon  which  earliest  receive  the  light 
when  she  is  in  her  increscent  state,  and  shine  like  a  thread  of 
silver  in  the  deep  blue  of  the  heavens,  that  first  become  dark 
when  she  falls  into  the  wane. 

It  is  mainly  during  the  elapsed  half  of  the  present  century 
that  this  change  for  the  worse  has  taken  place  in  the  large 
towns  of  Scotland.  In  the  year  1824  it  was  greatly  less  than 
half  accomplished  ;  but  it  was  fast  going  on  ;  and  I  saw,  par- 
tially at  least  the  processes  in  operation  through  which  it  has 
been  effected.  The  cities  of  the  countries  have  increased  their 
population  during  the  past  fifty  years  greatly  beyond  the  pro- 
portion of  its  rural  districts, — a  result  in  part  of  the  revolu- 
tions which  have  taken  place  in  the  agricultural  system  of  the 
Lowlands,  and  of  the  clearances  of  the  Highlands  ;  and  in  part 
also  of  that  extraordinary  development  of  the  manufactures 
and  trade  of  the  kingdom  which  the  last  two  generations  have 
witnessed.  Of  the  wilder  Edinburgh  mechanics  with  whom 
I  formed  at  this  time  any  acquaintance,  less  than  one-fourth 
were  natives  of  the  place.  The  others  were  mere  settlers  in  it, 
Who  had  removed  mostly  from  country  districts  and  small 


OR,   THE   STORY  OF  MY  EDUCATION.  351 

towns,  in  which  they  had  been  known,  each  by  his  own  circle 
of  neighborhood,  and  had  lived,  in  consequence,  under  the 
wholesome  influence  of  public  opinion.  In  Edinburgh, — 
grown  too  large  at  the  time  to  permit  men  to  know  aught  of 
their  neighbors, — they  were  set  free  from  this  wholesome  in- 
fluence, and,  unless  when  under  the  guidance  of  higher  prin- 
ciple, found  themselves  at  liberty  to  do  very  much  as  they 
pleased.  And, — with  no  general  opinion  to  control, — cliques 
and  parties  of  their  wilder  spirits  soon  formed  in  their  sheds  and 
workshops  a  standard  of  opinion  of  their  own,  and  found  only 
too  effectual  r  leans  of  compelling  their  weaker  comrades  to 
conform  to  it.  And  hence  a  great  deal  of  wild  dissipation  and 
profligacy,  united,  of  course,  to  the  inevitable  improvidence. 
And  though  dissipation  and  improvidence  are  quite  compatible 
with  intelligence  in  the  first  generation,  they  are  sure  always 
to  part  company  from  it  in  the  second.  The  family  of  the 
unsteady  spendthrift  workman  is  never  a  well-taught  family. 
It  is  reared  up  in  ignorance ;  and,  with  evil  example  set  be- 
fore and  around  it,  it  almost  necessarily  takes  its  place  among 
the  lapsed  classes.  In  the  third  generation  the  descent  is  of 
course  still  greater  and  more  hopeless  than  in  the  second. 
There  is  a  type  of  even  physical  degradation  already  manifest- 
ing itself  in  some  of  our  large  towns,  especially  among  de- 
graded females,  which  is  scarce  less  marked  than  that  exhib- 
ited by  the  negro,  and  which  both  my  Edinburgh  and  Glas- 
gow readers  must  have  often  remarked  on  the  respective  High 
Streets  of  these  cities.  The  features  are  generally  bloated  and 
overcharged,  the  profile  lines  usually  concave,  the  complexion 
coarse  and  high,  and  the  expression  that  of  a  dissipation  and 
sensuality  become  chronic  and  inherent.  And  how  this  class, 
— constitutionally  degraded,  and  wTith  the  moral  sense,  in  most 
instances,  utterly  undeveloped  and  blind, — are  ever  to  be  re- 
claimed, it  is  difficult  to  see.  The  immigrant  Irish  form  also 
a  very  appreciable  element  in  the  degradation  of  our  large 
towns.  They  are,  however,  pagans,  not  of  the  new,  but  of 
the  old  type;  and  are  chiefly  formidable  from  the  squalid 
wretchedness  of  a  physical  character  which  they  have  trans- 


852  MY  SCHOOLS  AND   SCHOOLMASTERS  ; 

ferred  ft  om  their  mud  cabins  into  our  streets  and  lanes,  and 
from  the  course  of  ruinous  competition  into  which  they  have 
entered  with  the  unskilled  laborers  of  the  country,  and  which 
has  had  the  effect  of  reducing  our  lowlier  countrymen  to  a 
humbler  level  than  they  perhaps  ever  occupied  before.  Mean- 
while, this  course  of  degradation  is  going  on,  in  all  our  larger 
towns,  in  an  ever-increasing  ratio ;  and  all  that  philanthropy 
and  the  Churches  are  doing  to  counteract  it  is  but  as  the  dis- 
charge of  a  few  squirts  on  a  conflagration.  It  is,  I  fear,  pre- 
paring terrible  convulsions  for  the  future.  "When  the  dan- 
gerous classes  of  a  country  were  located  in  its  remote  districts, 
as  in  Scotland  in  the  early  half  of  the  last  century,  it  wras  com- 
paratively easy  to  deal  with  them :  but  the  sans  culottes  of 
Paris,  in  its  First  Revolution,  placed  side  by  side  with  the  ex- 
ecutive Government,  proved  very  formidable  indeed  ;  nor  is 
it,  alas  !  very  improbable  that  the  ever-growing  masses  of  our 
large  towns,  broke  loose  from  the  sanction  of  religion  and 
morals,  may  yet  terribly  avenge  on  the  upper  classes  and  the 
Churches  of  the  country  the  indifferency  with  which  they  have 
been  suffered  to  sink. 

I  was  informed  by  Cousin  George,  shortly  after  my  arrival, 
that  my  old  friend  of  the  Doocot  Cave,  after  keeping  shop  as 
a  grocer  for  two  years,  had  given  up  business,  and  gone  to  col- 
lege to  prepare  himself  for  the  Church.  He  had  just  returned 
home,  added  George,  after  completing  his  first  session,  and  had 
expressed  a  strong  desire  to  meet  with  me.  His  mother,  too, 
had  joined  in  the  invitation, — would  I  not  take  tea  with  them 
that  evening  ? — and  Cousin  George  had  been  asked  to  accom- 
pany me.  I  demurred ;  but  at  length  set  out  with  George,  and, 
after  an  interruption  in  our  intercourse  of  about  five  years, 
spent  the  evening  with  my  old  friend.  And  for  years  after  we 
were  inseparable  companions,  who,  when  living  in  the  same 
eighborhood,  spent  together  almost  every  hour  not  given  to 
private  study  or  inevitable  occupation,  and  who,  when  separated 
by  distance,  exchanged  letters  enough  to  fill  volumes.  We  had 
parted  boys,  and  had  now  grown  men  ;  and  for  the  first  few 
wseks  we  took  stock  of  each  other's  acquirements  and  ex 


OE,   THE   STORY  OF  MY  EDUCATION.  853 

periences,  and  the  measure  of  each  other's  calibre,  with  some 
little  curiosity.  The  mind  of  my  friend  had  developed  rather 
in  a  scientific  than  literary  direction.  He  afterwards  carried 
away  the  first  mathematical  prize  of  his  year  at  college,  and 
the  second  in  natural  philosophy ;  and  he  had,  I  now  found, 
great  acuteness  as  a  metaphysician,  and  no  inconsiderable  ac- 
quaintance with  the  antagonist  positions  of  the  schools  of 
Hume  and  Reid.  On  the  other  hand,  my  opportunities  of  ob 
servation  had  been  perhaps  greater  than  his,  and  my  acquaint 
ance  with  men,  and  even  with  books,  more  extensive  ;  and  it 
the  interchange  of  idea  which  we  carried  on,  both  were  gainers: 
he  occasionally  picked  up  in  our  conversations  a  fact  of  which 
he  had  been  previously  ignorant ;  and  I,  mayhap,  learned  t< 
look  a  little  more  closely  than  before  at  an  argument.  I  intro- 
duced him  to  the  Eathie  Lias,  and  assisted  him  in  forming  a 
small  collection,  which,  ere  he  ultimately  dissipated  it,  contained 
some  curious  fossils, — among  the  others,  the  second  specimen 
of  Pterichthys  ever  found  ;  and  he,  in  turn,  was  able  to  give 
me  a  few  geological  notions,  which,  though  quite  crude  enough, 
— for  natural  science  was  not  taught  at  the  university  which 
he  attended, — I  found  of  use  in  the  arrangement  of  my  facts, 
— now  become  considerable  enough  to  stand  in  need  of  those 
threads  of  theory  without  which  large  accumulations  of  fact 
refuse  to  hang  together  in  the  memory.  There  was  one  special 
hypothesis  which  he  had  heard  broached,  and  the  utter  im- 
probability of  which  I  was  not  yet  geologist  enough  to  detect, 
which  for  a  time  filled  my  whole  imagination.  It  had  been 
said,  he  told  me,  that  the  ancient  world,  in  which  my  fossils, 
animal  and  vegetable,  had  flourished  and  decayed, — a  world 
greatly  older  than  that  before  the  Flood, — had  been  tenanted 
by  rational,  responsible  beings,  for  whom,  as  for  the  race  to 
which  we  ourselves  belong,  a  resurrection  and  a  day  of  final 
judgment  had  awaited.  But  many  thousands  of  years  had 
elapsed  since  that  day — emphatically  the  last  to  the  Pre- Adam- 
ite rac« — had  come  and  gone.  Of  all  the  accountable  crea- 
tures that  had  been  summoned  to  its  bar,  bone  had  been  gath- 
ered to  its  bone,  so  that  not  a  vestige  of  the  frame-work  of  their 


354  MY   SCHOOLS   AND   SCHOOLMASTERS; 

bodies  occurred  in  the  rocks  or  soils  in  which  they  had  been 
originally  inhumed  ;  and,  in  consequence,  only  the  remains  of 
their  irresponsible  contemporaries,  the  inferior  animals,  and  of 
the  vegetable  productions  of  their  fields  and  forests,  were  now 
to  be  found.  The  dream  filled  for  a  time  my  whole  imagina- 
tion;  but  though  poetry  might  find  ample  footing  on  a  hy 
pothesis  so  suggestive  and  bold,  I  need  scarce  say  that  it  has 
itself  no  foundation  in  science.  Man  had  no  responsible 
predecessor  on  earth.  At  the  determined  time,  when  his  ap- 
pointed habitation  was  completely  fitted  for  him,  he  came  and 
took  possession  of  it ;  but  the  old  geologic  ages  had  been  ages 
of  immaturity, — days  whose  work  as  a  work  of  promise  was 
"  good,"  but  not  yet  "  very  good,"  nor  yet  ripened  for  the 
appearance  of  a  moral  agent,  whose  nature  it  is  to  be  a  fellow- 
worker  with  the  Creator  in  relation  to  even  the  physical  and 
the  material.  The  planet  which  we  inhabit  seems  to  have 
been  prepared  for  man,  and  for  man  only. 

Partly  through  my  friend,  but  in  part  also  from  the  circum- 
stance that  I  retained  a  measure  of  intimacy  with  such  of  my 
school-fellows  as  had  subsequently  prosecuted  their  education 
at  college,  I  was  acquainted,  during  the  later  years  in  which  I 
wrought  as  a  mason,  with  a  good  many  university -taught  lads ; 
and  I  sometimes  could  not  avoid  comparing  them  in  my  mind 
with  working  men  of,  as  nearly  as  I  could  guess,  the  same 
original  calibre.  I  did  not  always  find  that  general  superiority 
on  the  side  of  the  scholar  which  the  scholar  himself  usually 
took  for  granted.  What  he  had  specially  studied  he  knew, 
save  in  rare  and  exceptional  cases,  better  than  the  working 
man ;  but  while  the  student  had  been  mastering  his  Greek  and 
Latin,  and  expatiating  in  Natural  Philosophy  and  the  Math- 
ematics, the  working  man,  if  of  an  inquiring  mind,  had  been 
doing  something  else ;  and  it  is  at  least  a  fact,  that  all  the 
great  readers  of  my  acquaintance  at  this  time, — the  men  most 
ex'  3nsively  acquainted  with  English  literature, — were  not  the 
men  who  had  received  the  classical  education.  On  the  other 
hand,  in  framing  an  argument,  the  advantage  lay  with  the 
scholars.     In  that  common  sense,  however,  which  reasons  but 


355 

does  not  argue,  and  which  enables  men  to  pick  their  stepping 
pru  3ently  through  the  journey  of  life,  I  found  that  the  class- 
ical education  gave  no  superiority  whatever ;  nor  did  it  appear 
to  form  so  fitting  an  introduction  to  the  realities  of  business  as 
that  course  of  dealing  with  things  tangible  and  actual  in  which 
the  working  man  has  to  exercise  his  faculties,  and  from  which 
he  derives  his  experience.  One  cause  of  the  over-low  estimate 
which  the  classical  scholar  so  often  forms  of  the  intelligence  of 
that  class  of  the  people  to  which  our  skilled  mechanics  belong, 
arises  very  much  from  the  forwardness  of  a  set  of  blockheads 
who  are  always  sure  to  obtrude  themselves  upon  his  notice, 
and  who  come  to  be  regarded  by  him  as  average  specimens 
of  their  order.  I  never  yet  knew  a  truly  intelligent  mechanic 
obtrusive.  Men  of  the  stamp  of  my  two  uncles,  and  of  my 
friend  William  Ross,  never  press  themselves  on  the  notice  of 
a  class  above  them.  A  minister  newly  settled  in  a  charge,  for 
instance,  often  finds  that  it  is  the  dolts  of  his  flock  that  first 
force  themselves  upon  his  acquaintance.  I  have  heard  the 
late  Mr.  Stewart  of  Cromarty  remark,  that  the  humbler  dun- 
derheads of  the  parish  had  all  introduced  themselves  to  his  ac- 
quaintance long  ere  he  found  out  its  clever  fellows.  And  hence 
often  sad  mistakes  on  the  part  of  a  clergyman  in  dealing  with 
the  people.  It  seems  never  to  strike  him  that  there  may  be 
among  them  men  of  his  own  calibre,  and,  in  certain  practical 
departments,  even  better  taught  than  he ;  and  that  this  su- 
perior class  is  always  sure  to  lead  the  others.  And  in  preach- 
ing down  to  the  level  of  the  men  of  humbler  capacity,  he  fails 
often  to  preach  to  men  of  any  capacity  at  all,  and  is  of  no  use. 
Some  of  the  clerical  contemporaries  of  Mr.  Stewart  used  to 
allege  that,  in  exercising  his  admirable  faculties  in  the  theolog- 
ical field,  he  sometimes  forgot  to  lower  himself  to  his  people, 
and  so  preached  over  their  heads.  And  at  times,  when  they 
themselves  came  to  occupy  his  pulpit,  as  occasionally  hap 
pened,  they  addressed  to  the  congregation  sermons  quite  sim 
pie  enough  for  even  children  to  comprehend.  I  taught  at  the 
time  a  class  of  boys  in  the  Cromarty  Sabbath-school,  and  in 
variably  fovnd  on  these  occasions,  that  while  the  memories  of 


356 

my  pupils  were  charged  to  the  full  with  the  striking  thoughts 
and  graphic  illustrations  of  the  very  elaborate  discourses 
deemed  too  high  for  them,  they  remembered  of  the  very  simple 
ones,  specially  lowered  to  suit  narrow  capacities,  not  a  single 
word  or  note.  All  the  attempts  at  originating  a  cheap  litera- 
ture that  have  failed,  have  been  attempts  pitched  too  low  :  the 
higher-toned  efforts  have  usually  succeeded.  If  the  writer  of 
these  chapters  has  been  in  any  degree  successful  in  addressing 
himself  as  a  journalist  to  the  Presbyterian  people  of  Scotland, 
it  has  always  been,  not  by  writing  down  to  them,  but  by  doing 
his  best  on  all  occasions  to  write  up  to  them.  He  has  ever 
thought  of  them  as  represented  by  his  friend  William,  his 
uncles,  and  his  Cousin  George, — by  shrewd  old  John  Fraser, 
and  his  reckless  though  very  intelligent  acquaintance  Cha ;  and 
by  addressing  to  them  on  every  occasion  as  good  sense  and  as 
solid  information  as  he  could  possibly  muster,  he  has  at  times 
succeeded  in  catching  their  ear,  and  perhaps,  in  some  degree, 
in  influencing  their  judgment. 


OB,   THE  STOEY  OF  MY  EDUCATION.  357 


CHAPTER  XVII 


ft  .'ware,  Lorenzo,  a  slow,  sudden  death." 

Young. 


There  was  one  special  subject  which  my  friend,  in  our  quiet 
evening  walks,  used  to  urge  seriously  upon  my  attention.  He 
had  thrown  up,  under  strong  religious  impressions,  what  prom- 
ised to  be  so  good  a  business,  and  in  two  years  he  had  al- 
ready saved  money  enough  to  meet  the  expenses  of  a  college 
course  of  education.  And  assuredly,  never  did  man  determine 
on  entering  the  ministry  with  views  more  thoroughly  disinter- 
ested than  his.  Patronage  ruled  supreme  in  the  Scottish  Estab- 
lishment at  the  time  ;  and  my  friend  had  no  influence  and  no 
patron  ;  but  he  could  not  see  his  way  clear  to  join  with  the 
Evangelical  Dissenters  or  the  Secession ;  and  believing  that  the 
most  important  work  on  earth  is  the  work  of  saving  souls,  he 
had  entered  on  his  new  course  in  the  full  conviction  that,  if  God 
had  work  for  him  of  this  high  character  to  do.  He  would  find 
him  an  opportunity  of  doing  it.  And  now,  thoroughly  in  ear- 
nest, and  as  part  of  the  special  employment  to  which  he  had 
devoted  himself,  he  set  himself  to  press  upon  my  attention 
*he  importance,  in  their  personal  bearing,  of  religious  concerns. 

I  was  not  unacquainted  with  the  standard  theology  of  the 
Scottish  Church.  In  the  parish  school  I  had,  indeed,  acquired 
no  ideas  on  the  subject ;  and  though  I  now  hear  a  good  deal 


358  MY  SCHOOLS  AND  SCHOOLMASTERS: 

said,  chiefly  with  a  controversial  bearing,  about  the  excellent 
religious  influence  of  our  parochial  seminaries,  I  never  knew 
any  one  who  owed  other  than  the  merest  smattering  of  theo- 
logical knowledge  to  these  institutions,  and  not  a  single  in- 
dividual who  had  ever  derived  from  them  any  tincture,  even 
the  slightest,  of  religious  feeling.  In  truth,  during  almost  the 
whole  of  the  last  century,  and  for  at  least  the  first  forty  years 
of  the  present,  the  people  of  Scotland  were,  with  all  their 
faults,  considerably  more  Christian  than  the  larger  part  of  their 
schoolmasters.  So  far  as  I  can  remember,  I  carried  in  my 
memory  from  school  only  a  single  remark  at  all  theological 
in  its  character,  and  it  was  of  a  kind  suited  rather  to  do 
harm  than  good.  In  reading  in  the  class  one  Saturday  morn- 
ing a  portion  of  the  Hundred  and  Nineteenth  Psalm,  I  was 
told  by  the  master  that  that  ethical  poem  was  a  sort  of  al- 
phabetical acrostic ;  a  circumstance,  he  added,  that  account- 
ed for  its  broken  and  inconsecutive  character  as  a  composition. 
Chiefly,  however,  from  the  Sabbath-day  catechisings  to  which 
I  had  been  subjected  during  boyhood  by  my  uncles,  and  lat- 
terly from  the  old  divines,  my  Uncle  Sandy's  favorites,  and 
from  the  teachings  of  the  pulpit,  I  had  acquired  a  considerable 
amount  of  religious  knowledge.  I  had  thought,  too,  a  good  deal 
about  some  of  the  peculiar  doctrines  of  Calvinism,  in  their  char- 
acter as  abtruse  positions, — such  as  the  doctrine  of  the  Di- 
vine decrees,  and  of  man's  inability  to  assume  the  initiative  in 
the  work  of  his  own  conversion.  I  had,  besides,  a  great  admira- 
tion of  the  Bible,  especially  of  its  narrative  and  poetical  parts  ; 
and  could  scarce  give  strong  enough  expression  to  the  contempt 
which  I  entertained  for  the  vulgar  and  tasteless  sceptics  who, 
with  Paine  at  their  head,  could  speak  of  it  as  a  weak  or  foolish 
book.  Farther,  reared  in  a  family  circle,  some  of  whose  mem 
bers  were  habitually  devout,  and  all  of  whom  respected  and 
stood  up  for  religion,  and  were  imbued  with  the  stirring  eccle- 
siastical traditions  of  their  country,  I  felt  that  the  religious  side 
in  any  quarrel  had  a  sort  of  hereditary  claim  upon  me.  I  be- 
lieve I  may  venture  to  say,  that  previous  to  this  time  I  had  never 
seen  a  religious  man  badgered  for  his  religion,  and  much  in  a 


OR,    THE   STORY   OF   MY   EDUCATION.  359 

minority,  without  openly  taking  part  with  him  ;  nor  is  it  im- 
p3ssible  that,  in  a  time  of  trouble,  I  might  have  almost  de- 
served the  character  given  by  old  John  Howie  to  a  rather 
notable  "  gentleman  sometimes  called  Burly,"  who,  "  although 
he  was  by  some  reckoned  none  of  the  most  religious,"  joined 
himself  to  the  suffering  party,  and  was  "  always  zealous  and 
honest-hearted."  And  yet  my  religion  was  a  strangely  in- 
congruous thing.  It  took  the  form,  in  my  mind,  of  a  mass 
of  indigested  theology,  with  here  and  there  a  prominent  point 
developed  out  of  due  proportion,  from  the  circumstance  that 
I  had  thought  upon  it  for  myself;  and  while,  entangled,  if  I 
may  so  speak,  amid  the  recesses  and  under  cover  of  the  gen- 
eral chaotic  mass,  there  harbored  no  inconsiderable  amount 
of  superstition,  there  rested  over  it  the  clouds  of  a  dreary 
scepticism.  I  have  sometimes,  in  looking  back  on  the  doubts 
and  questionings  of  this  period,  thought,  and  perhaps  even 
spoken,  of  myself  as  an  infidel.  But  an  infidel  I  assuredly 
was  not :  my  belief  was  at  least  as  real  as  my  incredulity,  and 
had,  I  am  inclined  to  think,  a  much  deeper  seat  in  my  mind. 
But  wavering  between  the  two  extremes, — now  a  believer,  and 
anon  a  sceptic, — the  belief  usually  exhibiting  itself  as  a  strongly- 
based  instinct, — the  scepticism  as  the  result  of  some  intellect- 
ual process, — I  lived  on  for  years  in  a  sort  of  uneasy  see-saw 
condition,  without  any  middle  ground  between  the  two  ex- 
tremes, on  which  I  could  at  once  reason  and  believe. 

That  middle  ground  I  now  succeeded  in  finding.  It  is  at  once 
delicate  and  dangerous  to  speak  of  one's  own  spiritual  condi- 
tion, or  of  the  emotional  sentiments  on  which  one's  conclusions 
regarding  it  are  often  so  doubtfully  founded.  Egotism  in  the  re- 
ligious form  is  perhaps  more  tolerated  than  in  any  other  ;  but  it 
is  not  on  that  account  less  perilous  to  the  egotist  himself.  There 
need  be,  however,  less  delicacy  in  speaking  of  one's  beliefs  than 
of  one's  feelings  ;  and  I  trust  I  need  not  hesitate  to  say,  that  I 
was  led  to  see  at  this  time,  through  the  instrumentality  of  my 
friend,  that  my  theologic  system  had  previously  wanted  a  central 
object,  to  which  the  heart,  as  certainly  as  the  intellect,  could  at- 


360  MY   SCHOOLS   AND   SCHOOLMASTERS  J 

tach  itself;  and  that  the  true  centre  of  an  efficient  Chris- 
imnityi&i  as  the  name  ought  of  itself  to  indicate,  "the  Word 
made  Flesh."  Around  this  central  sun  of  the  Christian  sys- 
tem,— appreciated,  however,  not  as  a  doctrine  which  is  a  mere 
abstraction,  but  as  a  Divine  Person, — so  truly  man,  that  the 
affections  of  the  human  heart  can  lay  hold  upon  Him,  and  so 
truly  -God,  that  the  mind,  through  faith,  can  at  all  times 
md  in  all  places  be  brought  into  direct  contact  with  Him, 
—all  that  is  truly  religious  takes  its  place  in  a  subsidiary  and 
subordinate  relation.  I  say  subsidiary  and  subordinate.  The 
Divine  Man  is  the  great  attractive  centre, — the  sole  gravi- 
tating point  of  a  system  which  owes  to  Him  all  the  coher- 
ency, and  which  would  be  but  a  chaos  were  He  away.  It 
seems  to  be  the  existence  of  the  human  nature  in  this  central 
and  paramount  object  that  imparts  to  Christianity,  in  its  sub- 
jective character,  its  peculiar  power  of  influencing  and  con- 
trolling the  human  mind.  There  may  be  men  who,  through  a 
peculiar  idiosyncrasy  of  constitution,  are  capable  of  loving, 
after  a  sort,  a  mere  abstract  God,  unseen  and  inconceivable  ; 
though,  as  shown  by  the  air  of  sickly  sentimentality  borne  by 
almost  all  that  has  been  said  and  written  on  the  subject,  the 
feeling,  in  its  true  form,  must  be  a  very  rare  and  exceptional 
one.  In  all  my  experience  of  men,  I  never  knew  a  genuine 
instance  of  it.  The  love  of  an  abstract  God  seems  to  be  as 
little  natural  to  the  ordinary  human  constitution  as  the  love 
of  an  abstract  sun  or  planet.  And  so  it  will  be  found,  that  in 
all  the  religions  that  have  taken  strong  hold  of  the  mind  of 
man,  the  element  of  a  vigorous  humanity  has  mingled,  in  the 
character  of  its  gods,  with  the  theistic  element.  The  gods  of 
the  classic  mythology  were  simply  powerful  men  let  loose 
from  the  tyranny  of  the  physical  laws ;  and,  in  their  purely 
human  character,  as  warm  friends  and  deadly  enemies,  they 
were  both  feared  and  loved.  And  so  the  belief  which  bowed 
at  their  shrines  ruled  the  old  civilized  world  for  many  cen- 
turies. In  the  great  ancient  mythologies  of  the  East, —  Budh- 
Ism  and  Brahmanism, — both  very  influential  forms  of  belief, 


OK,    THE   STORY    OF   MY   EDUCATION.  361 

■ — we  have  the  same  elements, — genuine  humanity  added  to 
god-like  power.  In  the  faith  of  the  Moslem,  the  human 
character  of  the  man  Mahommed,  elevated  to  an  all-potential 
vicegerency  in  things  sacred,  gives  great  strength  to  what  with- 
out it  would  be  but  a  weak  theism.  Literally  it  is  Allah's 
supreme  prophet  that  maintains  for  Allah  himself  a  place 
in  the  Mahommedan  mind.  Again,  in  Popery  we  find  an 
excess  of  humanity  scarce  less  great  than  in  the  classical  my- 
thology itself,  and  with  nearly  corresponding  results.  Though 
the  Virgin  Mother  takes,  as  queen  of  heaven,  a  first  place  in  the 
scheme,  and  forms  in  that  character  a  greatly  more  interesting 
goddess  than  any  of  the  old  ones  who  counselled  Ulysses,  or 
responded  to  the  love  of  Anchises  or  of  Endymion,  she  has  to 
share  her  empire  with  the  minor  saints,  and  to  recognize  in  them 
a  host  of  rivals.  But  undoubtedly  to  this  popular  element 
Popery  owes  not  a  little  of  its  indomitable  strength.  In,  how- 
ever, all  these  forms  of  religion,  whether  inherently  false  from 
the  beginning,  or  so  overlaid  in  some  after  stage  by  the  fictitious 
and  the  untrue  as  to  have  their  original  substratum  of  truth 
covered  up  by  error  and  fable,  there  is  such  a  want  of  coherency 
between  the  theistic  and  human  elements,  that  we  always  find 
them  undergoing  a  process  of  separation.  We  see  the  human 
element  ever  laying  hold  on  the  popular  mind,  and  there  mani- 
festing itself  in  the  form  of  a  vigorous  superstition ;  and  the 
theistic  element,  on  the  other  hand,  recognized  by  the  culti- 
vated intellect  as  the  exclusive  and  only  element,  and  elabo- 
rated into  a  sort  of  natural  theology,  usually  rational  enough 
in  its  propositions,  but  for  any  practical  purpose  always  feeble 
and  inefficient.  Such  a  separation  of  the  two  elements  took 
place  of  old  in  the  ages  of  the  classical  mythology  ;  and  hence 
the  very  opposite  characters  of  the  wild  but  genial  and  popu- 
lar fables  so  exquisitely  adorned  by  the  poets,  and  the  ra- 
tional but  uninfluential  doctrines  received  by  a  select  few  from 
the  philosophers.  Such  a  separation  took  place,  too,  in  France 
in  the  latter  half  of  the  last  century  ;  and  still  on  the  Euro- 
pean Continent  generally  do  wTe  find  this  separation  repre- 
sented by  the  asserters  of  a  weak  theism  on  the  one  hand,  and 


362  MY   SCHOOLS 

of  a  superstitious  saint-worship  on  the  other.  In  the  false  or 
corrupted  religions,  the  two  indispensable  elements  of  Divinity 
and  Humanity  appear  as  if  blended  together  by  a  mere  me- 
chanical process  ;  and  it  is  their  natural  tendency  to  separate, 
through  a  sort  of  subsidence  on  the  part  of  the  human  element 
from  the  theistic  oneyas  if  from  some  lack  of  the  necessary  af- 
finities. In  Christianity,  on  the  other  hand,  when  existing  in 
its  integrity  as  the  religion  of  the  New  Testament,  the  union  of 
the  two  elements  is  complete  :  it  partakes  of  the  nature,  not 
of  a  mechanical,  but  of  a  chemical  mixture  ;  and  its  great 
central  doctrine, — the  true  Humanity  and  true  Divinity  of  the 
Adorable  Saviour, — is  a  truth  equally  receivable  by  at  once  the 
humblest  and  the  loftiest  intellects.  Poor  dying  children 
possessed  of  but  a  few  simple  ideas,  and  men  of  the  most  ro- 
bust intellects,  such  as  the  Chalmerses,  Fosters,  and  Halls  of 
the  Christian  Church,  find  themselves  equally  able  to  rest  their 
salvation  on  the  man  "  Christ,  who  is  over  all,  God  blessed  for- 
ever." Of  this  fundamental  truth  of  the  two  natures,  that 
condensed  enunciation  of  the  gospel  which  forms  the  watch- 
word of  our  faith, "  Believe  in  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ,  and 
thou  shalt  be  saved,"  is  a  direct  and  palpable  embodiment ; 
and  Christianity  is  but  a  mere  name  without  it. 

I  was  impressed  at  this  time  by  another  very  remarkable  fea- 
ture in  the  religion  of  Christ  in  its  subjective  character.  Karnes, 
in  his  "Art  of  Thinking,"  illustrates,  by  a  curious  story,  one  of 
his  observations  on  the  "  nature  of  man."  "  Nothing  is  more 
common,"  he  says,  "  than  love  converted  into  hatred  ;  and  we 
have  seen  instances  of  hatred  converted  into  love."  And  in  ex- 
emplifying the  remark,  he  relates  his  anecdote  of  "Unnion  and 
Valentine."  Two  English  soldiers,  who  fought  in  the  wars  of 
Queen  Anne, — the  one  a  petty  officer,  the  other  a  private  sen- 
tinel,— had  been  friends  and  comrades  for  years ;  but,  quarrel 
ling  in  some  love  affair,  they  became  bitter  enemies.  The 
officer  made  an  ungenerous  use  of  his  authority,  and  so  annoy- 
ed and  persecuted  the  sentinel  as  almost  to  fret  him  into  mad- 
ness ;  and  he  was  frequently  heard  to  say  that  he  would  die  to 
be  avengo  1  of  him.    Whole  months  were  spent  in  the  infliction 


OR,    THE   STORY  OF  MY  EDUCATION.  863 

of  injuries  on  the  one  side,  and  in  the  venting  of  complaints  on 
the  other  ;  when,  in  the  midst  of  their  mutual  rage,  they  were 
both  selected,  as  men  of  tried  courage,  to  share  in  some  des- 
perate attack,  which  was,  however,  unsuccessful ;  and  the  of- 
ficer, in  the  retreat,  wras  disabled,  and  struck  down  by  a  shot 
in  the  thigh.  "  Ah,  Valentine  !  and  will  you  leave  me  here  to 
perish1?"  he  exclaimed,  as  his  old  comrade  rushed  past  him. 
The  poor  injured  man  immediately  returned ;  and,  in  the  midst 
of  a  thick  fire,  bore  off  his  wounded  enemy  to  what  seemed 
place  of  safety,  when  he  was  struck  by  a  chance  ball,  and  fell 
dead  under  his  burden.  The  officer,  immediately  forgetting  his 
wound,  rose  up,  tearing  his  hair ;  and  throwing  himself  on  the 
bleeding  body,  he  cried,  "  Ah,  Valentine !  and  was  it  for  me, 
who  have  so  barbarously  used  thee,  that  thou  hast  died  ?  I  will 
not  live  after  thee."  He  was  not  by  any  means  to  be  forced 
from  the  corpse;  but  was  removed  with  it  bleeding  in  his  arms, 
and  attended  with  tears  by  all  his  comrades,  who  knew  of  his 
harshness  to  the  deceased.  When  brought  to  a  tent,  his 
wounds  were  dressed  by  force ;  but  the  next  day,  still  calling 
on  Valentine,  and  lamenting  his  cruelties  to  him,  he  died  in 
the  pangs  of  remorse  and  despair. 

This  surely  is  a  striking  story ;  but  the  commonplace  re- 
mark based  upon  it  by  the  philosopher  is  greatly  less  so. 
Men  who  have  loved  do  often  learn  to  hate  the  object  of 
their  affections ;  and  men  who  have  hated  sometimes  learn 
to  love ;  but  the  portion  of  the  anecdote  specially  worthy  of 
remark  appears  to  be  that  which,  dwelling  on  the  o'ermaster- 
ing  remorse  and  sorrow  of  the  rescued  soldier,  shows  how  ef- 
fectually his  poor  dead  comrade  had,  by  dying  for  him  "  while 
he  was  yet  his  enemy,"  "  heaped  coals  of  fire  upon  his  head." 
And  such  seems  to  be  one  of  the  leading  principles  on  which, 
with  a  Divine  adaptation  to  the  heart  of  man,  the  scheme  of 
iledemption  has  been  framed.  The  Saviour  approved  his  love, 
'  in  that  while  we  were  yet  sinners,  He  died  for  us."  There 
s  an  inexpressibly  great  power  in  this  principle  •  ana  m&nv 
a  deeply  stirred  heart  has  felt  it  to  its  core.     The  theolo 


364  MY  SCHOOLS   AND  SCHOOLMASTERS; 

gians  have  perhaps  too  frequently  dwelt  on  the  Saviour's  vi- 
carious satisfaction  for  human  sin  in  its  relation  to  the  of- 
fended justice  of  the  Father.  How,  or  on  what  principle,  the 
Father  was  satisfied,  I  know  not,  and  may  never  know.  The 
enunciation  regarding  vicarious  satisfaction  may  be  properly 
received  in  faith  as  a  fad,  but,  I  suspect,  not  properly  reasoned 
upon  until  we  shall  be  able  to  bring  the  moral  sense  of  Deity, 
with  its  requirements,  within  the  limits  of  a  small  and  trivial 
logic.  But  the  thorough  adaptation  of  the  scheme  to  man's  na- 
ture is  greatly  more  appreciable,  and  lies  fully  within  the  reach 
of  observation  and  experience.  And  how  thorough  that  adapta- 
tion is,  all  who  have  really  looked  at  the  matter  ought  to  be  com- 
petent to  say.  Does  an  earthly  priesthood,  vested  with  alleged 
powers  to  interpose  between  God  and  man,  always  originate 
an  ecclesiastical  tyranny,  which  has  the  effect,  in  the  end,  of 
shutting  up  the  mass  of  men  from  their  Maker? — here  is 
there  a  High  Priest  passed  into  the  heavens, — the  only  Priest 
whom  the  evangelistic  Protestant  recognizes  as  really  such, 
— to  whom,  in  his  character  of  Mediator  between  God  and 
man,  all  may  apply,  and  before  whom  there  need  be  felt  none 
of  that  abject  prostration  of  the  spirit  and  understanding  which 
man  always  experiences  when  he  bends  before  the  merely 
human  priest  ?  Is  self-righteousness  the  besetting  infirmity  of 
the  religious  man  1 — in  the  scheme  of  vicarious  righteousness 
it  finds  no  footing.  The  self-approving  Pharisee  must  be  con 
tent  to  renounce  his  own  merits,  ere  he  can  have  part  or  lot  in 
the  fund  of  merit  which  alone  avails  ;  and  yet  without  personal 
righteousness  he  can  have  no  evidence  whatever  that  he  has 
an  interest  in  the  all-prevailing  imputed  righteousness.  But 
it  is  in  the  closing  scene  of  life,  when  man's  boasted  vir- 
tues become  so  intangible  in  his  estimation  that  they  elude 
Ms  grasp,  and  sins  and  shortcomings,  little  noted  before,  start 
up  around  him  like  spectres,  that  the  scheme  of  Redemption 
appears  worthy  of  the  infinite  wisdom  and  goodness  of  God, 
and  when  what  the  Saviour  did  and  suffered  seems  of  efficacy 
enough  to  bio*   :ut  the  guilt  of  every  offence.     It  is  when 


OK,    THE    STORY   OF   MY   EDUCATION.  365 

the  minor  lights  of  comfort  are  extinguished  that  the  Sun  of 
Righteousness  shines  forth,  and  more  than  compensates  for 
them  all. 

The  opinions  formed  at  this  time  on  this  matter  of  prime 
importance  I  found  no  after  occasion  to  alter  or  modify.  On 
the  contrary,  in  passing  from  the  subjective  to  the  objective 
view,  I  have  seen  the  doctrine  of  the  union  of  the  two  natures 
greatly  confirmed.  The  truths  of  geology  appear  destined  to 
exercise  in  the  future  no  inconsiderable  influence  on  natural 
theology  ;  and  with  this  especial  doctrine  they  seem  very  much 
in  accordance.  Of  that  long  and  stately  march  of  creation  with 
which  the  records  of  the  stony  science  bring  us  acquainted, 
the  distinguishing  characteristic  is  progress.  There  appears  to 
have  been  a  time  when  there  existed  on  our  planet  only  dead 
matter  unconnected  with  vitality ;  and  then  a  time  in  which 
plants  and  animals  of  a  low  order  began  to  be,  but  in  which 
even  fishes,  the  humblest  of  the  vertebrata,  were  so  rare  and 
few,  that  they  occupied  a  scarce  appreciable  place  in  Nature. 
Then  came  an  age  of  fishes  huge  of  size,  and  that  to  the  pe- 
culiar ichthyic  organization  added  certain  well-marked  char- 
acteristics of  the  reptilian  class  immediately  above  them.  And 
then,  after  a  time,  during  which  the  reptile  had  occupied  a  place 
as  inconspicuous  as  that  occupied  by  the  fish  in  the  earlier 
periods  of  animal  life,  an  age  of  reptiles  of  vast  bulk  and  high 
standing  was  ushered  in.  And  when,  in  the  lapse  of  untold 
ages,  it  also  had  passed  away,  there  succeeded  an  age  of  great 
mammals.  Molluces,  fishes,  reptiles,  mammals,  had  each  in 
succession  their  periods  of  vast  extent ;  and  then  there  came 
a  period  that  differed  even  more,  in  the  character  of  its  master- 
existence,  from  any  of  these  creations,  than  they,  with  their 
many  vitalities,  had  differed  from  the  previous  inorganic  period 
in  which  life  had  no  existence.  The  human  period  began, — 
the  period  of  a  fellow-worker  with  God,  created  in  God's  own 
image.  The  animal  existences  of  the  previous  ages  formed, 
,  if  I  may  so  express  myself,  mere  figures  in  the  landscapes  of 
the  great  garden  which  they  inhabited.  Man,  on  the  other 
hand,  was  placed  in  it  to  "  keep  and  to  dress  it ;"  and  such 


3G6 

has  "been  the  effect  of  his  labors,  that  they  have  altered  and 
improved  the  face  of  whole  continents.  Our  globe,  even  as  it 
might  be  seen  from  the  moon,  testifies,  over  its  surface,  to  that 
unique  nature  of  man,  unshared  in  by  any  of  the  inferior  an- 
imals, which  renders  him,  in  things  physical  and  natural,  a 
fellow-wwker  with  the  Creator  who  first  produced  it.  And  of 
the  identity  of  at  least  his  intellect  with  that  of  his  Maker,  and, 
of  consequence,  of  the  integrity  of  the  revelation  which  declares 
that  he  was  created  in  God's  own  image,  we  have  direct  evidence 
in  his  ability  of  not  only  conceiving  of  God's  contrivances,  but 
even  of  reproducing  them  ;  and  this,  not  as  a  mere  imitator,  but 
as  an  original  thinker.  He  may  occasionally  borrow  the  prin- 
ciples of  his  contrivances  from  the  works  of  the  Original  De- 
signer, but  much  more  frequently,  in  studying  the  works  of  the 
Original  Designer,  does  he  discover  in  them  the  principles  of 
his  own  contrivances.  He  has  not  been  an  imitator :  he  has 
merely  been  exercising,  with  resembling  results,  the  resembling 
mind,  i.  e.  the  mind  made  in  the  Divine  image.  But  the  ex- 
isting scene  of  things  is  not  destined  to  be  the  last.  High  as 
it  is,  it  is  too  low  and  too  imperfect  to  be  regarded  as  God's 
finished  work  :  it  is  merely  one  of  the  progressive  dynasties  ; 
and  Revelation  and  the  implanted  instincts  of  our  nature  alike 
teach  us  to  anticipate  a  glorious  terminal  dynasty.  In  the 
first  dawn  of  being,  simple  vitality  was  united  to  matter :  the 
vitality  thus  united  became,  in  each  succeeding  period,  of  a 
higher  and  yet  higher  order  ; — it  was  in  succession  the  vitality 
of  the  mollusc,  of  the  fish,  of  the  reptile,  of  the  sagacious 
mammal,  and,  finally,  of  responsible,  immortal  man,  created  in 
the  image  of  God  1  What  is  to  be  the  next  advance  ?  Is  there 
to  be  merely  a  repetition  of  the  past, — an  introduction  a  sec- 
ond time  of  "  man  made  in  the  image  of  God"  1  No  !  The 
geologist,  in  the  tables  of  stone  which  form  his  records,  finds 
no  example  of  dynasties  once  passed  away  again  returning. 
There  has  been  no  repetition  of  the  dynasty  of  the  fish, — of  the 
reptile, — of  the  mammal.  The  dynasty  of  the  future  is  to  have 
glorified  man  for  its  inhabitant ;  but  it  is  to  be  the  dynasty, 
■ — the  "  kin§  lom" — not  of  glorified  man  made  in  the  image 


OK,   THE   STORY  OF  MY  EDUCATION.  867 

of  God,  but  of  God  himself  in  the  form  of  man.  In  the  doc- 
trine of  the  two  natures,  and  in  the  further  doctrine  that  the 
terminal  dynasty  is  to  be  peculiarly  the  dynasty  of  Him,  in 
whom  the  natures  are  united,-  we  find  jhat  required  progression 
beyond  which  progress  cannot  go.  Creation  and  the  Creator 
meet  at  one  point,  and  in  one  person.  The  long  ascending 
line  from  dead  matter  to  man  has  been  a  progress  God  wards, 
— not  an  asymptotical  progress,  but  destined  from  the  begin- 
ning to  furnish  a  point  of  union  ;  and,  occupying  that  point  as 
true  God  and  true  man,  as  Creator  and  created,  we  iecognize 
the  adorable  Monarch  of  all  the  Future.  It  is,  as  urged  by 
the  Apostle,  the  especial  glory  of  our  race,  that  it  should  have 
furnished  that  point  of  contact  at  which  Godhead  has  united 
Himself,  not  to  man  only,  but  also,  through  man,  to  His  own 
Universe, — to  the  Universe  of  Matter  and  of  Mind. 

I  remained  for  several  months  in  delicate  and  somewhat 
precarious  health.  My  lungs  had  received  "more  serious  in- 
jury than  I  had  at  first  supposed ;  and  it  seemed  at  one  time 
rather  doubtful  whether  the  severe  mechanical  irritation  which 
had  so  fretted  them  that  the  air-passages  seemed  overcharged 
with  matter  and  stone-dust,  might  not  pass  into  the  complaint 
which  it  simulated,  and  become  confirmed  consumption.  Cu- 
riously enough,  my  comrades  had  told  me  in  sober  earnest, — ■ 
among  the  rest,  Cha,  a  man  of  sense  and  observation, — that  I 
would  pay  the  forfeit  of  my  sobriety  by  being  sooner  affected 
than  they  by  the  stone-cutter's  malady  :  "  a  good  bouse'''  gave, 
they  said,  a  wholesome  fillip  to  the  constitution,  and  "  cleared 
the  sulphur  off  the  lungs ;"  and  mine  would  suffer  for  want 
of  the  medicine  wThich  kept  theirs  clean.  I  know  not  whether 
there  was  virtue  in  their  remedy  :  it  seems  just  possible  that 
the  shock  given  to  the  constitution  by  an  overdose  of  strong 
drink  may  in  certain  cases  be  medicinal  in  its  effects ;  but 
hey  were  certainly  not  in  error  in  their  prediction.  Among 
/he  hewers  of  the  party  I  was  the  first  affected  by  the  malady. 
I  still  remember  the  rather  pensive  than  sad  feeling  with  which 
I  used  to  contemplate,  at  this  time,  an  early  death,  and  the  in- 
tense love  of  nature  that  drew  me,  day  after  day,  to  the  beau 


868  MY   SCHOOLS   AND   SCHOOLMASTERS; 

tiful  scene  *y  which  surrounds  my  native  town,  and  which  I 
loved  all  ttie  more  from  the  consciousness  that  my  eyes  might 
so  soon  close  upon  it  forever.  "  It  is  a  pleasant  thing  to  be- 
hold the  sun."  Among  my  manuscripts, — useless  scraps  of 
paper,  to  which,  however,  in  their  character  as  fossils  of  the 
past  epochs  of  my  life,  I  cannot  help  attaching  an  interest  not 
at  all  in  themselves, — I  find  the  mood  represented  by  only  a 
few  almost  infantile  verses,  addressed  to  a  docile  little  girl  of 
five  years,  my  eldest  sister  by  my  mother's  second  marriage, 
and  my  frequent  companion,  during  my  illness,  in  my  short 
walks. 

TO  JEANIE. 

Sister  Jeanie,  haste,  we'll  go 
To  where  the  white-starr'd  gowans  grow, 
Wi'  the  puddock-flower  o'  gowden  hue, 
The  snaw-drap  white  and  the  bonny  vi'let  blue. 

Sister  Jeanie,  haste,  we'll  go 
To  where  the  blossom'd  lilacs  grow, — 
To  where  the  pine-tree,  dark  an'  high, 
Is  pointing  its  tap  at  the  cludless  sky. 

Jeanie,  raony  a  merry  lay 
Is  sung  in  the  young-leav'd  woods  to-day; 
Flits  on  light  wing  the  dragon-flee, 
An'  hums  on  the  flowrie  the  big  red-bee. 

Down  the  burnie  wirks  its  way 
Aneath  the  bending  birken  spray, 
An'  wimples  roun'  the  green  moss  stane, 
An'  mourns,  I  kenna  why,  wi'  a  ceaseless  mane 

Jeanie,  come;  thy  days  o'  play 
Wi'  autumn  tide  shall  pass  away  ; 
Sune  shall  these  scenes,  in  darkness  cast, 
Be  ravaged  wild  by  the  wild  winter  blast. 

Though  to  thee  a  spring  shall  rise, 
An'  scenes  as  fair  salute  thine  eyes; 
An'  though,  through  many  a  cludless  day, 
My  winsome  Jean  shall  be  heartsome  and  gay 

He  wha  grasps  thy  little  hand 
Nae  langer  at  thy  side  shall  stand, 
Nor  o'er  the  flower-besprinkled  brae 
Lead  thee  the  lown'est  an'  the  bonniest  way. 


OR,    THE   STORY   OF   MY   EDUCATION.  369 


Dost  thou  see  yon  yard  sae  green, 
SpreckPd  wi'  many  a  mossy  stane? 
A  few  short  weeks  o"1  pain  shall  fly, 
Air  asleep  in  that  bid  shall  thy  puir  brither  lie. 

Then  thy  mither's  tears  awhile 
May  chide  thy  joy  an'  damp  thy  srjile; 
But  sune  ilk  grief  shall  wear  awa' 
And  I'll  be  forgotten  by  ane  an'  by  a'. 

Dinna  think  the  thought  is  sad  ; 
Life  vex'd  me  aft.  but  this  mak's  glad: 
Whan  cauld  my  heait  and  clos'd  my  ee', 
Bonny  shall  the  dreams  o'  my  slumbers  be. 


At  length,  however,  my  constitution  threw  off  the  malady  ; 
though — as  I  still  occasionally  feel — the  organ  affected  never 
quite  regained  its  former  vigor  ;  and  I  began  to  experience  the 
quiet  but  exquisite  enjoyment  of  the  convalescent.  After  long 
and  depressing  illnesses,  youth  itself  appears  to  return  with  re- 
turning health ;  and  it  seems  to  be  one  of  the  compensating  pro- 
visions, that  while  men  of  robust  constitution  and  rigid  or- 
ganization get  gradually  old  in  their  spirits  and  obtuse  in 
their  feelings,  the  class  that  have  to  endure  being  many  times 
sick  have  the  solace  of  being  also  many  times  young.  The 
reduced  and  weakened  frame  becomes  as  susceptible  of  the 
emotional  as  in  tender  and  delicate  youth.  I  know  not  that 
I  ever  spent  three  happier  months  than  the  autumnal  months 
of  this  year,  when  gradually  picking  up  flesh  and  strength 
amid  my  old  haunts,  the  woods  and  caves.  My  friend  had 
left  me  early  in  July  for  Aberdeen,  where  he  had  gone  to 
prosecute  his  studies  under  the  eye  of  a  tutor,  one  Mr.  Dun- 
can, whom  he  described  to  me  in  his  letters  as  perhaps  the 
most  deeply  learned  man  he  had  ever  seen.  "  You  may  ask 
him  a  common  question,"  said  my  friend,  "  without  getting  an 
answer, — for  he  has  considerably  more  than  the  average  ab- 
sentness  of  the  great  scholar  about  him  ;  but  if  you  inquire  of 
him  the  state  of  any  one  controversy  ever  agitated  in  the 
Church  or  the  world,  he  will  give  it  you  at  once,  with,  if  you 
please,  all  the  arguments  on  both  sides."  The  trait  struck  me 
at  the  time  as  one  of  some  mark  ;    and  I  thought  of  it  many 


370  MY   SCHOOLS   AND    SCHOOLMASTERS; 

years  after,  when  fame  had  blown  the  name  of  my  friend's 
tutor  pretty  widely  as  Dr.  Duncan,  Hebrew  Professor  in  our 
Free  Church  College,  and  one  of  the  most  profoundly  learned 
of  Orientalists.  Though  separated,  however,  from  my  friend, 
I  found  a  quiet  pleasure  in  following  up,  in  my  solitary  walks, 
the  views  which  his  conversations  had  suggested ;  and  in  a 
copy  of  verses,  the  production  of  this  time,  which,  with  all 
their  poverty  and  stiffness,  please  me  as  true,  and  as  repre- 
sentative of  the  convalescent  feeling,  I  find  direct  reference  to 
the  beliefs  which  he  had  labored  to  instil.  My  verses  are 
written  in  a  sort  of  metre  which,  in  the  hands  of  Collins,  be- 
came flexible,  and  exquisitely  poetic,  and  which  in  those  of 
Kirke  White  is  at  least  pleasing,  but  of  which  we  find  poor 
enough  specimens  in  the  "  Anthologies"  of  Sou  they,  and 
which  perhaps  no  one  so  limited  in  his  metrical  vocabulary, 
and  so  defective '  in  his  musical  ear,  as  the  writer  of  these 
chapters,  should  ever  have  attempted. 

SOLACE. 

No  star  of  golden  influence  hailed  thebinh 
Of  him  who,  all  unknown  and  lonely,  pour9, 

As  fails  the  light  of  eve, 

His  pensive,  artless  song; 
Yea,  those  who  mark  out  honor,  ease,  wealth,  fame, 
As  man's  sole  joys,  shall  find  no  joy  in  him  ; 

Yet  of  far  nobler  kind 

His  silent  pleasures  prove. 
For  not  unmarked  by  him  the  ways  of  men  ; 
Nor  yet  to  him  the  ample  page  unknown, 

Where,  trac'd  by  Nature's  hand, 

Is  many  a  pleasing  line. 
O !  when  the  world's  dull  children  bend  the  knee, 
Meanly  obsequious,  to  some  mortal  god, 

It  yields  no  vulgar  joy 

Alone  to  stand  aloof; 
Or  when  they  jostle  on  wealth's  crowded  road, 
And  swells  the  tumult  on  the  breeze,  'tis  sweet, 

Thoughtful,  at  length  reclined, 

To  list  the  wrathful  hum. 
What  though  the  weakly  gay  affect  to  scorn 
The  loitering  dreamer  of  life's  darkest  shade, 

Stingless  the  jeer,  whose  voice 

Comes  from  the  erroneous  path. 


37i 


Scorner,  of  all  thy  toils  the  end  declare! 

If  pleasure,  pleasure  comes  uncall'd  to  cheer 

The  haunts  of  him  who  spends 

His  hours  in  quiet  thought. 
And  happier  lie  who  can  repress  desire, 
Than  they  who  seldom  mourn  a  thwarted  wish: 

The  vassals  they  of  fate, — 

The  unbending  conqueror  he. 
And  thou,  blest  Muse,  though  rudely  strung  thy  lyre, 
Its  tones  can  guile  the  dark  °nd  lonesome  day, — 

Can  smooth  the  wrinkled  brow, 

And  dry  the  sorrowing  tear. 
Thine  many  a  bliss, — O,  many  a  solace  thine! 
By  thee  upheld,  the  soul  asserts  her  throne, 

The  chastened  passions  sleep, 

And  dove-eyed  Peace  prevails. 
And  thou,  fair  Hope!  when  other  comforts  fail, — 
When  night's  thick  mists  descend, — thy  beacon  flamsu, 

Till  grow  the  dark  clouds  round 

With  beams  of  promised  bliss. 
Thou  failest  not,  when,  mute  the  soothing  lyre, 
Lives  thy  unfading  solace:  sweet  to  raise 

Thy  eye,  O  quiet  Hope, 

And  greet  a  friend  in  heaven ! — 
A  friend,  a  brother,  one  whose  awful  throne 
In  holy  fear  heaven's  mightiest  sons  approach: 

Man's  heart  to  feel  for  man, — 

To  save  him  God's  great  power  ! 
'Conqueror  of  death,  joy  of  the  accepted  soul, 
Oy  wonders  raise  no  doubt  when  told  of  thee  ! 

Thy  way  past  finding  out, 

Thy  love,  can  tongue  declare  ? 
Chet-ed  by  thy  smile,  Peace  dwells  amid  the  storm  ; 
Held  by  thy  hand,  the  floods  assail  in  vain  ; 

With  grief  is  blent  a  joy, 

And  beams  the  vault  of  death. 

Passing,  m  one  of  my  walks  this  autumn,  the  cave  in  whictt 
I  used  to  .spend  in  boyhood  so  many  happy  hours  with  Finlay, 
1  found  in  smoking,  as  of  old,  with  a  huge  fire,  and  occupied 
by  a  wiider  and  more  careless  party  than  even  my  truant 
schoolfellows.  It  has  been  discovered  and  appropriated  by  a 
band  of  gipsies,  who,  attracted  by  the  soot-stains  on  its  roof 
and  sides,  a*id  concluding  that  it  had  been  inhabited  by  the 
gipsies  of  oiher  days,  had,  without  consulting  factor  or  landlord, 
17 


872 

at  once  entered  upon  possession,  as  the  proper  successors  of  its 
former  occupants.  They  were  a  savage  party,  with  a  good 
deal  of  the  true  gipsy  blood  in  them,  but  not  without  mixture 
of  a  broken-down  class  of  apparently  British  descent;  and  one 
of  their  women  was  purely  Irish.  From  what  I  had  previously 
heard  about  gipsies,  I  was  not  prepared  for  a  mixture  of  this 
kind  ;  but  I  found  it  pretty  general,  and  ascertained  that  at 
least  one  of  the  ways  in  which  it  had  taken  place  was  exem- 
plified by  the  case  of  the  one  Irish  woman.  Her  gipsy  hus- 
band had  served  as  a  soldier,  and  had  married  her  when  in  the 
army.  I  have  been  always  exceedingly  curious  to  see  man  in 
his  rude  elements, — to  study  him  as  the  savage,  whether  among 
the  degraded  classes  of  our  own  country,  or,  as  exhibited  in 
the  writings  of  travellers  and  voyagers,  in  his  aboriginal  state  ; 
and  I  now  did  not  hesitate  to  visit  the  gipsies,  and  to  spend 
not  unfrequently  an  hour  or  two  in  their  company.  They  at 
first  seemed  jealous  of  me  as  a  spy  ;  but  finding  me  inoffensive, 
and  that  I  did  not  bewray  counsel,  they  came  at  length  to  re- 
cognize me  as  the  "  quiet,  sickly  lad,"  and  to  chatter  as  freely 
in  my  presence  as  in  that  of  the  other  pitchers  with  ears,  which 
they  used  to  fabricate  out  of  tin  by  the  dozen  and  the  score, 
and  the  manufacture  of  which,  with  the  making  of  horn  spoons, 
formed  the  main  branch  of  business  carried  on  in  the  cave.  I 
saw  in  these  visits  curious  glimpses  of  gipsy  life.  I  could 
trust  only  to  what  I  actually  witnessed :  what  was  told  me 
could  on  no  occasion  be  believed ;  for  never  were  there  lies 
more  gross  and  monstrous  than  those  of  the  gipsies ;  but  even 
the  lying  formed  of  itself  a  peculiar  trait.  I  have  never  heard 
lying  elsewhere  that  set  all  probability  so  utterly  at  defiance, — 
a  consequence,  in  part,  of  their  recklessly  venturing,  like  un- 
skilful authors,  to  expatiate  in  walks  of  invention  over  which 
their  experience  did  not  extend.  On  one  occasion  an  old  gipsy 
woman,  after  pronouncing  my  malady  consumption,  prescribed 
for  me  as  an  infallible  remedy,  raw  parsley  minced  small  and 
made  up  into  balls  with  fresh  butter ;  but  seeing,  I  suppose,  from 
my  manner,  that  I  lacked  the  necessary  belief  in  her  specific, 
she  went  on  to  say,  that  she  had  derived  her  knowledge  of  such 


373 

matters  from  her  mother,  one  of  the  most  "  skeely  women  that 
ever  lived."  Her  mother,  she  said,  had  once  healed  a  lord's 
son  of  a  grievous  hurt  in  half  a  minute,  after  all  the  English 
doctors  had  shown  they  could  do  nothing  for  him.  His  eve 
had  been  struck  out  of  its  socket  by  a  blow,  and  hung  half- 
way  down  his  cheek  ;  and  though  the  doctors  could  of  course 
return  it  to  its  place,  it  refused  to  stick,  always  falling  out 
again.  Her  mother,  however,  at  once  understood  the  case ; 
and,  making  a  little  slit  at  the  back  of  the  young  man's  neck, 
she  got  hold  of  the  end  of  a  sinew,  and  pulling  in  the  dislodged 
orb  at  a  tug,  she  made  all  tight  by  running  a  knot  on  the  con- 
trolling ligament,  and  so  kept  the  eye  in  its  place.  And,  save 
that  the  young  lord  continued  to  squint  a  little,  he  was  well  at 
once.  The  peculiar  anatomy  on  which  this  invention  was 
framed  must  have,  of  course,  resembled  that  of  a  wax-doll  with 
winking  eyes  ;  but  it  did  well  enough  for  the  woman ;  and, 
having  no  character  for  truth  to  maintain,  she  did  not  hesitate 
to  build  on  it.  On  asking  her  whether  she  ever  attended 
church,  she  at  once  replied,  "O  yes,  at  one  time  very  often. 
I  am  the  daughter  of  a  minister, — a  natural  daughter,  you 
know  :  my  father  was  the  most  powerful  preacher  in  all  the 
south,  and  I  always  went  to  hear  him."  In  about  an  hour 
after,  however,  forgetting  her  extemporary  sally,  and  the  rev- 
erend character  with  which  she  had  invested  her  sire,  she 
spoke  of  him,  in  another  equally  palpable  invention,  as  the 
greatest  "  king  of  the  gipsies"  that  the  gipsies  ever  had.  Even 
the  children  had  caught  this  habit  of  monstrous  mendacity. 
There  was  one  of  the  boys  of  the  band,  considerably  under 
twelve,  who  could  extemporize  lying  narratives  by  the  hour, 
and  seemed  always  delighted  to  get  a  listener  ;  and  a  little 
girl,  younger  still,  who  "  lisped  in  fiction  for  the  fiction  came." 
There  were  two  things  that  used  to  strike  me  as  peculiar  among 
these  gipsies, — a  Hindu  type  of  head,  small  of  size,  but  with 
a  considerable  fulness  of  forehead,  especially  along  the  medial 
line,  in  the  region,  as  the  phrenologist  would  perhaps  say,  of 
individuality  and  cojnparison  •  and  a  singular  posture  assumed 
by  the  elderly  females  of  the  tribe  in  squatting  before  their 


374  MY  SCHOOLS  AND  SCHOOLMASTERS; 

fires,  ir  which  the  elbow  rested  on  the  knees  brought  close  to- 
gether, he  chin  on  the  palms,  and  the  entire  figure  (some- 
what resembling  in  attitude  a  Mexican  mummy)  assumed  an 
outlandish  appearance,  that  reminded  me  of  some  of  the  more 
grotesque  sculptures  of  Egypt  and  Hindustan.  The  peculiar 
type  of  head  was  derived,  I  doubt  not,  from  an  ancestry 
originally  different  from  that  of  the  settled  races  of  the  coun- 
try ;  nor  is  it  impossible  that  the  peculiar  position, — unbke 
any  I  have  ever  seen  Scottish  females  assume, — was  also  of 
foreign  origin. 

I  have  witnessed  scenes  among  these  gipsies,  of  which  the 
author  of  the  "  Jolly  Beggars"  might  have  made  rare  use,  but 
which  formed  a  sort  of  materials  that  I  lacked  the  special  abili- 
ty rightly  to  employ.  It  was  reported  on  one  occasion  that 
a  marriage  ceremony  and  wedding  were  to  take  place  in  the 
cave,  and  I  sauntered  the  way,  in  the  hope  of  ascertaining  how 
its  inmates  contrived  to  do  for  themselves  what  of  course  no 
clergyman  could  venture  to  do  for  them, — seeing  that,  of  the 
parties  to  be  united,  the  bridegroom  might  have  already  as 
many  wives  living  as  "  Peter  Bell,"  and  the  bride  as  many  hus- 
bands. A  gipsy  marriage  had  taken  place  a  few  years  pre- 
vious in  a  cave  near  Rosemarkie.  An  old  male  gipsy,  pos- 
sessed of  the  rare  accomplishment  of  reading,  had  half-read, 
half-spelled  the  English  marriage-service  to  the  young  couple, 
and  the  ceremony  was  deemed  complete  at  its  close.  And  I  now 
expected  to  witness  something  similar.  In  an  opening  in  the 
wood  above,  I  encountered  two  very  drunk  gipsies,  and  saw 
the  first  fruits  of  the  coming  merriment.  One  of  the  two  was 
an  uncouth-looking  monster,  sallow-skinned,  flat-faced,  round- 
shouldered,  long  and  thinly  limbed,  at  least  six  feet  two  inches 
in  height,  and,  from  his  strange  misproportions,  he  might  have 
passed  for  seven  feet  any  day,  were  it  not  that  his  trousers, 
made  for  a  much  shorter  man,  a»id  rising  to  the  middle  of  his 
calfless  legs,  gave  him  much  the  appearance  of  a  big  boy  walk- 
ing on  stilts.  The  boys  of  the  place  called  him  "Giant 
Grimbo ;"  while  his  companion,  a  tight  dapper  little  fellow, 
who  always  showed  off  a  compact,  well-rounded  leg  in  cordu 


OR,   THE   STORY  OF   MY  EDUCATION.  o75 

roy  inexpressibles,  they  had  learned  to  distinguish  as  ft  Billy 
Breeches."  The  giant,  who  carried  a  bag-pipe,  had  broken 
down  ere  I  came  up  with  them  ;  and  now,  sitting  on  the  grass, 
he  was  droning  out  in  fitful  blasts  a  diabolical  music,  to  which 
Billy  Breeches  was  dancing ;  but,  just  as  I  passed,  Billy  also 
gave  way,  after  wasting  an  infinity  of  exertion  in  keeping  erect ; 
And,  falling  over  the  prostrate  musician,  I  could  hear  the  bag 
groaning  out  its  soul  as  he  pressed  against  it,  in  a  lengthened 
melaneholious  squeal.  I  found  the  cave  bearing  an  aspect  of 
more  than  ordinary  picturesqueness.  It  had  its  two  fires,  and 
its  double  portion  of  smoke,  that  went  rolling  out  in  the  calm 
like  an  inverted  river ;  for  it  clung  close  to  the  roof,  as  if  by  a 
reversed  gravitation,  and  turned  its  foaming  surface  lown- 
wards.  At  the  one  fire  an  old  gipsy  woman  was  engaged  in 
baking  oaten  cakes ;  and  a  great  pot,  that  dispensed  through 
the  cave  the  savory  odor  of  unlucky  poultry  cut  short  in  the 
middle  of  their  days,  and  of  hapless  hares  destroyed  without 
the  game  license,  depended  over  the  other.  An  ass,  the  com- 
mon property  of  the  tribe,  stood  meditating  in  the  fore-ground ; 
two  urchins,  of  about  from  ten  to  twelve  years  a-piece, — 
wretchedly  supplied  in  the  article  of  clothing, — for  the  one, 
provided  with  only  a  pair  of  tattered  trousers,  was  naked  from 
the  waist  upwards,  and  the  other,  furnished  with  only  a  dilap- 
idated jacket,  was  naked  from  the  waist  downwards, — were 
engaged  in  picking  up  fuel  for  the  fire,  still  further  in  front ; 
a  few  of  the  ordinary  inmates  of  the  place  lounged  under  cover 
of  the  smoke,  apparently  in  a  mood  not  in  the  least  busy  ;  and 
on  a  couch  of  dried  fern  sat  evidently  the  central  figure  of  the 
group,  a  young,  sparkling-eyed  brunette,  more  than  ordinarily 
marked  by  the  Hindu  peculiarities  of  head  and  feature,  and 
attended  by  a  savage-looking  fellow  of  about  twenty,  dark  as 
a  mulatto,  and  with  a  profusion  of  long  flexible  hair,  black  as 
jet,  hanging  down  to  his  eyes,  and  clustering  about  his  cheeks 
and  neck.  These  were,  I  ascertained,  the  bride  and  bride- 
groom. The  bride  was  engaged  in  sewing  a  cap, — the  bride- 
groom in  watching  the  progress  of  the  work.  I  observed  that 
the  party,  whc  were  less  communicative  than  usual,  seemed  to 


376  Ml    SCHOOLS  AND   SCHOOLMASTERS  ; 

regard  me  in  the  light  of  an  intruder.  An  elderly  tinker,  tne 
father  of  the  bride,  gray  as  a  leafless  thorn  in  winter,  but 
still  stalwart  and  strong,  sat  admiring  a  bit  of  spelter  of  about 
a  pound  weight.  It  was  gold,  he  said,  or,  as  he  pronounced 
the  word,  "guild,"  which  had  been  found  in  an  old  cairn,  and 
was  of  immense  value,  "  for  it  was  peer  guild,  and  that  was 
the  best  o'  guild ;"  but  if  I  pleased,  he  would  sell  it  to  me,  a 
very  great  bargain.  I  was  engaged  with  some  difficulty  in  de- 
clining the  offer,  when  we  were  interrupted  by  the  sounds  of 
the  bag-pipe.  Giant  Grimbo  and  Billy  Breeches  had  suc- 
ceeded in  regaining  their  feet,  and  were  seen  staggering 
towards  the  cave.  "  Where's  the  whisky,  Billy  V  inquired 
the  proprietor  of  the  gold,  addressing  himself  to  the  man  of 
the  small  clothes.  "Whisky!"  said  Billy,  "ask  Grimbo." 
"  Where's  the  whisky,  Grimbo  ?"  reiterated  the  tinker. 
"  Whisky  !"  replied  Grimbo,  "  Whisky  !"  and  yet  again,  after 
a  pause  and  a  hiccup,  "  Whisky  !"  "  Ye  confounded  blacks  !" 
said  the  tinker,  springing  to  his  feet  with  an  agility  wonderful 
for  an  age  so  advanced  as  his,  "  Have  you  drank  it  all  %  But 
take  that,  Grimbo,  he  added,  planting  a  blow  full  on  the  side 
of  the  giant's  head,  which  prostrated  his  vast  length  along  the 
floor  of  the  cave.  "  And  take  that,  Billy,"  he  iterated,  deal- 
ing such  another  blow  to  the  shorter  man,  which  sent  him 
right  athwart  his  prostrate  comrade.  And  then,  turning  to 
me  she  remarked  with  perfect  coolness,  "  That,  master,  I  call 
smart  hitting."  "  Honest  lad,"  whispered  one  of  the  women 
immediately  after,  "  it  will  be  a  reugh  time  wi'  us  here  the 
nicht :  you  had  just  better  be  stepping  your  ways."  I  had 
already  begun  to  think  so  without  prompting ;  and  so,  taking 
my  leave  of  the  gipsies,  I  failed  being,  as  I  had  proposed,  one 
>f  the  witnesses  of  the  wredding. 

There  is  a  sort  of  grotesque  humor  in  scenes  of  the  kind 
described,  that  has  charms  for  artists  and  authors  of  a  particu- 
lar class, — some  of  them  men  of  broad  sympathies  and  great 
genius ;  and  hence,  through  their  representations,  literary  and 
pictorial,  the  ludicrous  point  of  view  has  come  to  be  the  con- 
ventional and  ordinary  one.     And  yet  it  is  a  sad  enough  mer- 


OS,   THE   STORY   OF   MY   EDUCATION.  377 

riment,  after  all,  that  has  for  its  subject  a  degradation  so  ex- 
treme, I  never  knew  a  gipsy  that  seemed  to  possess  a  moral 
sense, — a  degree  of  Pariahism  which  has  been  reached  by  only 
one  other  class  in  the  country,  and  that  a  small  one, — the  de- 
scendants of  degraded  females  in  our  large  towns.  An  educa- 
tion in  Scotland,  however  secular  in  its  character,  always  casts 
a  certain  amount  of  enlightenment  on  the  conscience ;  a  home, 
however  humble,  whose  inmates  win  their  bread  by  honest  in- 
dustry, has  a  similar  effect ;  but  in  the  peculiar  walks  in  which 
for  generations  there  has  been  no  education  of  any  kind,  or  in 
which  bread  has  been  the  wages  of  infamy,  the  moral  sense 
seems  so  wholly  obliterated,  that  there  appears  to  survive 
nothing  in  the  mind  to  which  the  missionary  or  the  moralist 
can  appeal.  It  seems  scarce  possible  for  a  man  to  know  even 
a  very  little  of  these  classes,  without  learning,  in  consequence, 
to  respect  honest  labor,  and  even  secular  knowledge,  as  at 
least  the  second-best  things,  in  their  moral  bearing  and  in- 
fluence, that  can  exist  among  a  people. 


378  MY   SCHOOLS   AND   SCHOOLMASTERS  I 


CHAPTER  XVIII 


44 For  such  is  the  flaw  or  the  depth  of  the  plan 
In  the  make  of  that  wonderful  creature  call'd  man, 
No  two  virtues,  whatever  relation  they  claim, 
Nor  even  two  different  shades  of  the  same, 
Though  like  as  was  ever  twin-brother  to  brother, 
Possessing  the  one  shall  imply  you've  the  other." 

Burns 

During  my  period  of  convalescence,  I  amused  myself  in 
hewing  for  my  uncles,  from  an  original  design,  an  ornate  dial- 
stone  ;  and  the  dial-stone  still  exists,  to  show  that  my  skill  as 
a  stone-cutter  rose  somewhat  above  the  average  of  the  pro- 
fession in  those  parts  of  the  country  in  which  it  ranks  highest. 
Gradually  as  I  recovered  health  and  strength,  little  jobs  came 
dropping  in.  I  executed  sculptured  tablets  in  a  style  not 
common  in  the  north  of  Scotland  ;  introduced  into  the  church- 
yards of  the  locality  a  better  type  of  tombstone  than  had  ob- 
tained in  them  before,  save,  mayhap,  at  a  very  early  period ; 
distanced  all  my  competitors  in  the  art  of  inscription-cutting ; 
and  at  length  found  that,  without  exposing  my  weakened 
lungs  to  the  rough  tear  and  wear  to  which  the  ordinary  stone- 
cutter must  subject  himself,  I  could  live.  I  deemed  it  an 
advantage,  too,  rather  than  the  reverse,  that  my  new  branch  of 
employment  brought  me  not  unfrequently  for  a  few  days  into 
country  districts  sufficiently  distant  from  home  to  present  me 
with  netf  fields  of  observation,  and  to  open  up  new  tracts  of 


OK,   THE  STORY   OF  MY  EDUCATION.  379 

inquiry.  Sometimes  I  spent  half  a  week  in  a  farm-house  in 
the  neighborhood  of  some  country  churchyard, — sometimes  I 
lodged  in  a  village, — oftener  than  once  I  sheltered  beside  some 
gentleman's  seat,  where  the  august  shadow  of  laird  ship  lay 
heavy  on  society ;  and  in  this  way  I  came  to  see  and  know  a 
good  deal  of  the  Scottish  people,  in  their  many-colored  aspects, 
of  which  otherwise  I  might  have  remained  ignorant.  At 
times,  too,  on  some  dusty  cottage  shelf  I  succeeded  in  picking 
up  a  rare  book,  or,  what  was  not  less  welcome,  got  a  curious 
tradition  from  the  cottager ;  or  there  lay  within  the  reach  of 
an  evening  walk  some  interesting  piece  of  antiquity,  or  some 
rock-section,  which  I  found  it  profitable  to  visit.  A  solitary 
burying-ground,  too,  situated,  as  country  burying-grounds 
usually  are,  in  some  pleasant  spot,  and  surrounded  by  its 
groupes  of  ancient  trees,  formed  a  much  more  delightful  scene 
of  labor  than  a  dusty  work-shed,  or  some  open  area  in  a  bus*} 
town ;  and  altogether  I  found  my  new  mode  of  life  a  quie . 
and  happy  one.  Nor,  with  all  its  tranquillity,  was  it  a  sort 
of  life  in  which  the  intellect  was  in  any  great  danger  of  falling 
asleep.  There  was  scarce  a  locality  in  which  new  game  might 
not  be  started,  that,  in  the  running  down,  kept  the  faculties 
in  full  play.  Let  me  exemplify  by  describing  the  courses  of 
inquiry,  physical  and  metaphysical,  which  opened  up  to  me 
when  spending  a  few  days,  first  in  the  burying-ground  of  Kirk- 
michael,  and  next  in  the  churchyard  of  Nigg. 

I  have  elsewhere  somewhat  fancifully  described  the  ruinous 
chapel  and  solitary  grave-yard  of  Kirkmichael  as  lying  on  the 
sweep  of  a  gentle  declivity,  within  a  few  yards  of  a  flat  sea- 
beach,  so  little  exposed  to  the  winds,  that  it  would  seem  as 
if  "  ocean  muffled  its  waves  in  approaching  this  field  of  the 
dead."  And  so  the  two  vegetations, — that  of  the  land  and  of 
the  sea, — undisturbed  by  the  surf,  which  on  opener  coasts  pre- 
vents the  growth  of  either  along  the  upper  littoral  line,  where 
the  waves  beat  heaviest,  here  meet  and  mingle,  each  encroach- 
ing for  a  little  way  on  the  province  of  the  other.  And  at 
meal-times,  and  when  returning  homewards  in  the  evening 
along  the  shore   it  furnished  me  with  amusement  enough  to 


380  MY  SCHOOLS  AND  SCHOOLMASTERS* 

mark  the  character  of  the  several  plants  of  both  floras  that  thus 
meet  and  cross  each  other,  and  the  appearances  which  they 
assume  when  inhabiting  each  the  other's  province.  On  the 
side  of  the  land,  beds  of  thrift,  with  its  gay  flowers  the  sea- 
pinks,  occupied  green  prominent  cushions,  that  stood  up  like 
little  islets  amid  the  flowing  sea,  and  were  covered  over  by 
salt  water  during  stream-tides  to  the  depth  of  from  eighteen 
inches  to  two  feet.  With  these  there  occasionally  mingled 
spikes  of  the  sea-lavender ;  and  now  and  then,  though  more 
rarely,  a  sea-aster,  that  might  be  seen  raising  above  the  calm 
surface  its  composite  flowers,  with  their  bright  yellow  stamina! 
pods,  and  their  pale  purple  petals.  Far  beyond,  however, 
even  the  cushions  of  thrift,  I  could  trace  the  fleshy,  jointed 
stems  of  the  glass-wort,  rising  out  of  the  mud,  but  becoming 
diminutive  and  branchless  as  I  followed  them  downwards,  till, 
at  depths  where  they  must  have  been  frequently  swum  over 
by  the  young  coal-fish  and  the  flounder,  they  appeared  as 
mere  fleshy  spikes,  scarce  an  inch  in  height,  and  then  ceased. 
On  the  side  of  the  sea  it  was  the  various  fucoids  that  rose 
highest  along  the  beach :  the  serrated  fucus  barely  met  the 
salt-wort ;  but  the  bladder-bearing  fucus  [fucus  nodosus) 
mingled  its  brown  fronds  not  unfrequently  with  the  crimson 
flowers  of  the  thrift,  and  the  vesicular  fucus  (fucus  vesiculosus) 
rose  higher  still,  to  enter  into  strange  companionship  with  the 
sea-side  plaintains  and  the  common  scurvy -grass.  Green  en- 
teromorpha  of  two  species — E.  compressa  and  E.  intestinalis 
• — I  also  found  abundant  along  the  edges  of  the  thrift-beds ; 
and  it  struck  me  as  curious  at  the  time,  that  while  most  of 
the  land-plants  which  had  thus  descended  beyond  the  sea- 
level  were  of  the  high  dicotyledonous  division,  the  sea-weeds 
with  which  they  mingled  their  leaves  and  seed-vessels  were 
low  in  their  standing, — fuci  and  enteromorpha, — plants  at 
least  not  higher  than  their  kindred  cryptogamia,  the  lichens 
ani  mosses  of  the  land.  Far  beyond,  in  the  outer  reaches  of 
the  bay,  where  land-plants  never  approached,  there  were 
meadows  of  a  sub-marine  vegetation,  of  (for  the  sea)  a  compar- 
atively high  character.     Their  numerous  plants  {zoster a  ma- 


OK    THE   STORY  OF  MY   EDUCATION.  381 

rina)  had  true  roots,  and  true  leaves,  and  true  flowers ;  and 
their  spikes  ripened  amid  the  salt  waters  towards  the  close  of 
autumn,  round  white  seeds,  that,  like  many  of  the  seeds  of 
the  land,  had  their  sugar  and  starch.  But  these  plants  kept 
far  aloof,  in  their  green  depths,  from  their  cogeners  the  mono- 
cotyledons of  the  terrestrial  flora.  It  was  merely  the  lew 
Fucacece  and  Confervece  of  the  sea  that  I  found  meeting  and 
mixing  with  the  descending  dicotyledons  of  the  land.  I  felt  a 
good  deal  of  interest  in  marking,  about  this  time,  how  certain 
belts  of  marine  vegetation  occurred  on  a  vast  boulder  situated 
in  the  neighborhood  of  Cromarty,  on  the  extreme  line  of  the 
ebb  of  spring-tides.  I  detected  the  various  species  ranged  in 
zones,  just  as  on  lofty  hills  the  botanist  finds  his  agricultural, 
moorland,  and  alpine  zones  rising  in  succession  the  one  over 
the  other.  At  the  base  of  the  huge  mass,  at  a  level  to  which 
the  tide  rarely  falls,  the  characteristic  vegetable  is  the  rough- 
stemmed  tangle, — Laminaria  digitata.  In  the  zone  imme- 
diately above  the  lowest,  the  prevailing  vegetable  is  the 
smooth-stemmed  tangle, — Laminaria  saccharina.  Higher 
still  there  occurs  a  zone  of  the  serrated  fucus, — F.  serratus, — ■ 
blent  with  another  familiar  fucus, — F.  nodosus.  Then  comes 
a  yet  higher  zone  of  Fucus  vesiculosus  ;  and  higher  still,  a  few 
scattered  tufts  of  Fucus  canaliculatus  ;  and  then,  as  on  lofty 
mountains  that  rise  above  the  line  of  perpetual  snow,  vegeta- 
tion ceases,  and  the  boulder  presents  a  round  bald  head,  that 
rises  over  the  surface  after  the  first  few  hours  of  ebb  have 
passed.  But  far  beyond  its  base,  where  the  sea  never  falls, 
green  meadows  of  zostera  flourish  in  the  depths  of  the  water, 
where  they  unfold  their  colorless  flowers,  unfurnished  with 
petals,  and  ripen  their  farinaceous  seeds,  that,  wherever  they 
rise  to  the  surface,  seem  very  susceptible  of  frost.  I  have 
seen  the  shores  strewed  with  a  line  of  green  zostera,  with  its 
spikes  charged  with  seed,  after  a  smart  October  frost,  that 
had  been  coincident  with  the  ebb  of  a  low  spring-tide,  had 
nipt  its  rectilinear  fronds  and  flexible  stems. 

But  what,  it  may  be  asked,  was  the  bearing  of  all  this  ob- 
servation 1     I  by  no  means  saw  its  ent"re  bearing  at  the  time: 


382  MY   SCHOOLS 

I  simply  observed  and  recorded,  because  I  found  it  pleasant  to 
observe  and  record.  And  yet  one  of  the  wild  dreams  of 
Maillet  in  his  Telliamed  had  given  a  certain  degree  of  unity, 
and  a  certain  definite  direction,  to  my  gleanings  of  fact  on  the 
subject,  which  they  would  not  have  otherwise  possessed.  It 
was  held  by  this  fanciful  writer,  that  the  vegetation  of  the 
land  had  been  derived  originally  from  that  of  the  ocean.  "  In 
a  word,"  we  find  him  saying,  "  do  not  herbs,  plants,  roots, 
grain,  and  all  of  this  kind  that  the  earth  produces  and  nour- 
ishes, come  from  the  sea  1  Is  it  not  at  least  natural  to  think  so, 
since  we  are  certain  that  all  our  habitable  lands  came  originally 
from  the  sea  1  Besides,  in  small  islands  far  from  the  Conti- 
nent, which  have  appeared  a  few  ages  ago  at  most,  and  where  it 
is  manifest  that  never  any  men  had  been,  we  find  shrubs,  herbs, 
and  roots.  Now,  you  must  be  forced  to  own  that  either  those 
productions  owed  their  origin  to  the  sea,  or  to  a  new  creation, 
which  is  absurd."  And  then  Maillet  goes  on  to  show,  after 
a  manner  which — now  that  algseology  has  become  a  science — 
must  be  regarded  as  at  least  curious,  that  the  plants  of  the  sea, 
though  not  so  well  developed  as  those  of  the  land,  are  really 
very  much  of  the  same  nature.  "  The  fishermen  of  Marseilles 
find  daily,"  he  says,  "  in  their  nets,  and  among  their  fish,  plants 
of  a  hundred  kinds,  with  their  fruits  still  upon  them ;  and 
though  these  fruits  are  not  so  large  nor  so  well  nourished  as 
those  of  our  earth,  yet  their  species  is  in  no  other  respects  du- 
bious. There  they  find  clusters  of  white  and  black  grapes, 
peach  trees,  pear  trees,  prune  trees,  apple  trees,  and  all  sorts  of 
flowers."  Such  was  the  sort  of  wild  fable  invented  in  a  tract 
of  natural  science  in  which  I  found  it  of  interest  to  acquaint 
myself  with  the  truth.  I  have  since  seen  the  extraordinary 
vision  of  Maillet  revived,  first  by  Oken,  and  then  by  the  author 
of  the  "  Vestiges  of  Creation ;"  and  when,  in  grappling  with  some 
of  the  views  and  statements  of  the  latter  writer,  I  set  myself  to 
wrrite  the  chapter  of  my  little  work  which  deals  with  this  spe- 
cial hypothesis,  I  found  that  I  had  in  some  sort  studied  in  the 
school  in  which  the  education  necessary  to  its  production  was 
most  thoroughly  to  be  acquired.     Had  the  ingenious  author 


388 

of  the  "  Vestiges"  taken  lessons  for  but  a  short  time  at  the 
same  form,  he  would  scarce  have  thought  of  reviving  in 
these  latter  ages  the  dream  of  Oken  and  Maillet.  A  knowl 
edge  of  the  facts  would  to  a  certainty  have  protected  him 
against  the  reproduction  of  the  hypothesis. 

The  lesson  at  Nigg  was  of  a  more  curious  kind,  though, 
mayhap,  less  certainly  conclusive  in  its  bearings.  The  house 
of  the  proprietor  of  Nigg  bordered  on  the  burying-ground.  I 
was  engaged  in  cutting  an  inscription  on  the  tombstone  of  his 
wife,  recently  dead  ;  and  a  poor  idiot,  who  found  his  living  in 
the  kitchen,  and  to  whom  the  deceased  had  shown  kindness, 
used  to  come  every  day  to  the  churchyard,  to  sit  beside  me, 
"and  jabber  in  broken  expressions  his  grief  I  was  struck  with 
the  extremeness  of  his  idiotcy  :  he  manifested  even  more  than 
the  ordinary  inability  of  his  class  to  deal  with  figures,  for  he 
could  scarce  tell  whether  nature  had  furnished  him  with  one 
head  or  with  two ;  and  no  power  of  education  could  have 
taught  him  to  count  his  fingers.  He  was  equally  defective, 
too,  in  the  mechanical.  Angus  could  not  be  got  into  trousers  ; 
and  the  contrivance  of  the  button  remained  a  mystery  which 
he  was  never  able  to  comprehend.  And  so  he  wore  a  large 
blue  gown,  like  that  of  a  beadsman,  which  slipped  over  his 
head,  and  was  bound  by  a  belt  round  his  middle,  with  a  stout 
woollen  shirt  underneath.  But,  though  unacquainted  with 
the  mystery  of  the  button,  there  were  mysteries  of  another  kind 
with  which  he  seemed  to  have  a  most  perfect  acquaintance : 
Angus — always  a  faithful  attendant  at  church — was  a  great 
critic  in  sermons  ;  nor  was  it  every  preacher  that  satisfied  him ; 
and  such  was  his  imitative  turn,  that  he  himself  could  preach 
by  the  hour,  in  the  manner — so  far  at  least  as  voice  and  ges- 
ture went — of  all  the  popular  ministers  of  the  district.  There 
was,  however,  rather  a  paucity  of  idea  in  his  discourses  :  in 
his  more  energetic  passages,  when  he  struck  the  book  and 
stamped  with  his  foot,  he  usually  iterated,  in  sonorous  Gaelic, 
— "The  wicked,  the  wicked,  O  wretches  the  wicked  '"  while 
a  passage  of  a  less  depreciatory  character  served  him  for  set- 
ting off'  his  middle  tones  and  his  pathos.      But  that  for  which 


384 

his  character  was  chiefly  remarkable  was  an  instinctive,  fox 
like  cunning,  that  seemed  to  lie  at  its  very  basis, — a  cunning 
which  co-existed,  however,  with  perfect  honesty,  and  a  de- 
voted attachment  to  his  patron  the  proprietor. 

The  town  of  Cromarty  had  its  poor  imbecile  man  of  quite  a 
different  stamp.  Jock  Gordon  had  been,  it  was  said,  "  like 
other  people"  till  his  fourteenth  year,  when  a  severe  attack  of 
illness  left  him  bankrupt  in  both  mind  and  body.  He  rose 
rom  his  bed  lame  of  a  foot  and  hand,  his  one  side  shrunken 
and  nerveless,  the  one  lobe  of  his  brain  apparently  inopera- 
tive, and  with  less  than  half  his  former  energy  and  intellect; 
not  at  all  an  idiot,  however,  though  somewhat  more  helpless, 
— the  poor  mutilated  fragment  of  a  reasoning  man.  Among 
his  other  failings,  he  stuttered  lamentably.  He  became  an  in- 
mate of  the  kitchen  of  Cromarty  House  ;  and  learned  to  run, 
or,  I  should  rather  say,  to  limp,  errands — for  he  had  risen 
from  the  fever  that  ruined  him  to  run  no  more — with  great 
fidelity  and  success.  He  was  fond  of  church-going,  of  read- 
ing good  little  books,  and,  notwithstanding  his  sad  stutter,  of 
singing.  During  the  day,  he  might  be  heard,  as  he  hobbled 
along  the  streets  on  business,  "  singing  in  into  himself"  as  the 
children  used  to  say,  in  a  low  unvaried  undertone,  somewhat 
resembling  the  humming  of  a  bee  ;  but  when  night  fell,  the 
whole  town  heard  him.  He  was  no  patronizer  of  modern 
poets  or  composers.  "  There  was  a  ship,  and  a  ship  of  fame," 
and  "  Death  and  the  Fair  Lady,"  were  his  especial  favorites ; 
and  he  could  repeat  the  "  Gosport  Tragedy,"  and  the  "  Babes 
in  the  Wood,"  from  beginning  to  end.  Sometimes  he  stutter- 
ed in  the  notes,  and  then  they  lengthened  on  and  on  into  a 
never-ending  quaver  that  our  first-rate  singers  might  have  en- 
vied. Sometimes  there  was  a  sudden  break  ; — Jock  had  been 
consulting  the  pocket  in  which  he  stored  his  bread ; — but  no 
sooner  was  his  mouth  half-cleared,  than  he  began  again.  In 
middle -life,  however,  a  great  calamity  overtook  Jock.  His 
patron,  the  occupant  of  Cromarty  House,  quitted  the  country 
for  France  :  Jock  was  left  without  occupation  or  aliment ; 
and  the  streets  heard  no  more  of  his  songs.     He  grew  lank 


OR,    THE   STORY   OF   MY   EDUCATION.  385 

and  thin,  and  stuttered  and  limped  more  painfully  than  oe- 
fore,  and  was  in  the  last  stage  of  privation  and  distress  ; 
when  a  benevolent  proprietor  of  Nigg,  who  resided  half  the 
year  in  a  town-house  in  Cromarty,  took  pity  upon  him,  and 
introduced  him  to  his  kitchen.  And  in  a  few  days  Jock  was 
singing  and  limping  errands  with  as  much  energy  as  ever. 
But  the  time  at  length  came  'when  his  new  benefactor  had  to 
quit  his  house  in  town,  fur  his  seat  in  the  country ;  and  it 
Dehoved  Jock  to  take  temporary  leave  of  Cromarty  and  fol 
io w  him.  And  then  the  poor  imbecile  man  of  the  town 
kitchen  had,  of  course,  to  measure  himself  against  his  for- 
midable rival,  the  vigorous  idiot  of  the  country  one. 

On  Jock's  advent  at  Nigg, — which  had  taken  place  a  few 
weeks  previous  to  my  engagement  in  the  burying-ground  of 
the  parish, — the  character  of  Angus  seemed  to  dilate  in  energy 
and  power.  He  repaired  to  the  churchyard  with  spade  and 
pick  axe,  and  began  digging  a  grave.  It  was  a  grave,  he  said, 
for  wicked  Jock  Gordon  ;  and  Jock,  whether  he  thought  it  or 
no,  had  come  to  Nigg,  he  added,  only  to  be  buried.  Jock, 
however,  was  not  to  be  dislodged  so  ;  and  Angus,  professing 
sudden  friendship  for  him,  gave  expression  to  the  magnani- 
mous resolution,  that  he  would  not  only  tolerate  Jock,  but  also 
be  very  kind  to  him,  and  show  him  the  place  where  he  kept 
all  his  money.  He  had  lots  of  money,  he  said,  which  he  had 
hidden  in  a  dike ;  but  he  would  show  the  place  to  Jock  Gor- 
don,— to  poor  cripple  Jock  Gordon :  he  would  show  him  the 
very  hole,  and  Jock  would  get  it  all.  And  so  he  brought 
Jock  to  the  hole, — a  cavity  in  a  turf-wall  in  the  neighboring 
wood, — and,  taking  care  that  his  own  way  of  retreat  was  clear 
he  bade  him  insinuate  his  hand.  No  sooner  had  he  done  so, 
however,  than  there  issued  forth  from  between  his  fingers  a 
cloud  of  wasps,  of  the  variety  so  abundant  in  the  north  eoun 
try.  that  build  their  nests  in  earthy  banks  and  old  mole-hills; 
and  poor  Jock,  ill  titled  for  retreat  in  any  sudden  emergency, 
was  stung  within  an  inch  of  his  life.  Angus  returned  in  high 
glee,  preaching  about"  wicked  Jock  Gordon,  whom  the  very 
wasps  wouldn't  let  alone  ;"  but  though  he  pretended  no  further 


386  MY   SCHOOLS   AND   SCHOOLMASTERS' 

friendship  for  a  few  clays  after,  he  again  drew  to  him  in  ap- 
parent kindness  ;  and  on  the  following  Saturday,  on  Jock  be- 
ing despatched  to  a  neighboring  smithy  with  a  sheep's  head 
to  singe,  Angus  volunteered  his  services  to  show  him  the  way. 

Angus  went  trotting  before  ;  Jock  came  limping  behind  : 
the  fields  were  open  and  bare ;  the  dwellings  few  and  far  be 
tween ;  and  after  having  passed,  in  about  an  hour's  walking, 
half-a-dozen  little  hamlets,  Jock  began  to  marvel  exceedingly 
that  there  should  be  no  sign  of  the  smith's  shop.  "  Poor  fool- 
ish  Jock  Gordon !"  ejaculated  Angus,  quickening  his  trot  into 
a  canter :  "  what  does  he  know  about  carrying  sheep's  heads 
to  the  smithy  1  Jock  labored  hard  to  keep  up  with  his 
guide  ;  quavering  and  semi-quavering,  as  his  breath  served. — 
for  Jock  always  began  to  sing,  when  in  solitary  places,  after 
nightfall,  as  a  protection  against  ghosts.  At  length  the  day- 
light died  entirely  away,  and  he  could  only  learn  from  Angus 
that  the  smithy  was  farther  off  than  ever ;  and,  to  add  to  his 
trouble  and  perplexity,  the  roughness  of  the  ground  showed 
him  that  they  were  wandering  from  the  road.  First  they  went 
toiling  athwart  what  seemed  an  endless  range  of  fields,  sep- 
arated from  one  another  by  deep  ditches  and  fences  of  stone ; 
then  they  crossed  over  a  dreary  moor,  bristling  with  furze 
and  sloe-thorn  ;  then  over  a  waste  of  bogs  and  quagmires  : 
then  across  a  tract  of  newly-ploughed  land  ;  and  then  they  en- 
tered a  second  wood.  At  length,  after  a  miserable  night's 
wandering,  day  broke  upon  the  two  forlorn  satyrs  ;  and  Jock 
found  himself  in  a  strange  country,  with  a  long  narrow  lake 
in  front,  and  a  wood  behind.  He  had  wandered  after  his 
guide  into  the  remote  parish  of  Tarbet. 

Tarbet  abounded  at  that  time  in  little  muddy  lakes,  edged 
with  water-flags  and  reeds,  and  swarming  with  frogs  and  eels  ; 
and  it  was  one  of  the  largest  and  deepest  of  these  that  now  lay 
before  Jock  and  his  guide.  Angus  tucked  up  his  blue  gown, 
as  if  to  wade  across.  Jock  would  have  as  soon  thought  of 
fording  the  German  Ocean.  "  O,  wicked  Jock  Gordon  !"  ex- 
claimed the  fool,  when  he  saw  him  hesitate  ;  "  the  Colonel's 
waiting,  poor  man,  for  his  head,  and  Jock  will  no'  take  it  to 


OR,    THE    STORY   OF   MY   EDUCATION.  387 

the  smithy."  He  stepped  into  the  water.  Joek  followed  in 
sheer  desperation;  and,  after  clearing  the  belt  of  reeds,  Loth 
sank  to  the  middle  in  the  mingled  water  and  mud.  Angus 
had  at  length  accomplished  the  object  of  his  journey.  Extri- 
cating himself  in  a  moment, — for  he  was  lithe  and  active, — he 
snatched  the  sheep's  head  and  trotters  from  Jock,  and,  leaping 
ashore,  left  the  poor  man  sticking  fast.  It  was  church-time 
ere  he  reached,  on  his  way  back,  the  old  Abbey  of  Fearn,  still 
employed  as  a  Protestant  place  of  worship ;  and  as  the  sight 
of  the  gathering  people  awakened  his  church-going  propensity, 
he  went  in.  He  was  in  high  spirits, — seemed,  by  the  mouths 
he  made,  very  much  to  admire  the  sermon, — and  paraded  the 
'sheep's  head  and  trotters  through  the  passages  and  gallery  a 
score  of  times  at  least,  like  a  monk  of  the  order  of  St.  Francis 
exhibiting  the  relics  of  some  favorite  saint.  In  the  evening 
he  found  his  way  home,  but  learned,  to  his  grief  and  astonish- 
ment, that  "  wicked  Jock  Gordon"  had  got  there  shortly  be- 
fore him  in  a  cart.  The  poor  man  had  remained  sticking  in 
the  mud  for  three  long  hours  after  Angus  had  left  him,  until 
at  length  the  very  frogs  began  to  cultivate  his  acquaintance,  as 
they  had  clone  that  of  King  Log  of  old ;  and  in  the  mud  he 
would  have  been  sticking  still,  had  he  not  been  extricated  by 
a  farmer  of  Fearn,  who,  in  coming  to  church,  had  taken  the 
lake  in  his  way.  He  left  Nigg,  however,  for  Cromarty  on  the 
following  day,  convinced  that  he  was  no  match  for  his  rival, 
and  dubious  how  the  next  adventure  might  terminate. 

Such  was  the  story  which  I  found  current  in  Nigg,  when 
working  in  its  churchyard,  with  the  hero  of  the  adventure  often 
beside  me.  It  led  me  to  take  special  note  of  his  class,  and 
to  collect  facts  respecting  it,  on  which  I  erected  a  sort  of  semi- 
metaphysical  theory  of  human  character,  which,  though  it 
would  not  now  be  regarded  as  by  any  means  a  novel  one,  I 
had  thought  out  for  myself,  and  which  possessed  for  me,  in 
consequence,  the  charm  of  originality.  In  these  poor  creatures, 
I  thus  argued,  we  find,  amid  much  general  dilapidation  and 
brokenness  of  mind,  certain  instincts  and  peculiarities  remain- 
ing entire.     Here,  in  Angus,  for  instance,  there  is  that  instinct- 


388  MY   SCHOOLS   AND    SCHOOLMASTERS  ; 

ive  cunning  which  some  of  the  lower  animals,  such  as  the  fux, 
possess,  existing  in  a  wonderful  degree  of  perfection.  Pope 
himself,  who  "could  not  drink  tea  without  a  stratagem,1' 
could  scarce  have  possessed  a  larger  share  of  it.  And  yet 
how  distinct  must  not  this  sort  of  ingenuity  be  from  the 
mechanical  ingenuity  !  Angus  cannot  fix  a  button  in  its 
hole.  I  even  see  him  baffled  by  a  tall  snuff-box,  with  a  small 
quantity  of  snuff  at  its  bottom,  that  lies  beyond  the  reach  of 
his  finger.  He  has  not  ingenuity  enough  to  lay  it  on  its  side, 
or  to  empty  its  snuff  on  his  palm ;  but  stretches  and  ever 
stretches  towards  it  the  unavailing  digit,  and  then  gets  angry 
to  find  it  elude  his  touch.  There  are  other  idiots,  however, 
who  have  none  of  Angus's  cunning,  in  whom  this  mechanical 
ability  is  decidedly  developed.  Many  of  the  cretins  of  the 
Alps  are  said  to  be  remarkable  for  their  skill  as  artisyns ;  and 
it  is  told  of  a  Scotch  idiot,  who  lived  in  a  cottage  on  the  Maol- 
buie  Common  in  the  upper  part  of  the  Black  Isle,  and  in  whom 
a  similar  mechanical  ability  existed,  abstracted  from  ability  of 
almost  every  other  kind,  that,  among  other  things,  he  fabricated, 
out  of  a  piece  of  rude  metal,  a  large  sacking  needle.  Angus  is 
attached  to  his  patron,  and  mourns  for  the  deceased  lady  ;  but 
he  seems  to  have  little  general  regard  for  the  species, — simply 
courting  for  the  time  those  from  whom  he  expects  snuff.  A 
Cromarty  idiot,  on  the  contrary,  is  obliging  and  kindly  to  all, 
and  bears  a  peculiar  love  to  children ;  and  though  more  ap 
imbecile  in  some  respects  than  even  Angus,  he  has  a  turn  for 
dress,  and  can  attire  himself  very  neatly.  In  this  last  respect, 
however,  the  Cro  narty  fool  was  excelled  by  an  idiot  of  the 
last  age,  known  to  the  children  of  many  a  village  and  hamlet 
as  Fool  Charloch,  who  used  to  go  wandering  about  the  coun- 
try, adorned  somewhat  in  the  style  of  an  Indian  chief,  with 
half  a  peacock's  tail  stuck  in  his  cap.  Yet  another  idiot,  a 
fierce  and  dangerous  creature,  seemed  as  invariably  malignant 
in  his  dispositions  as  the  Cromarty  one  is  benevolent,  and  died 
in  a  prison,  to  which  he  had  been  committed  for  killing  a  poor 
half-witted  associate.  Yet  another  idiot  of  the  north  of  Scot- 
land had  a  strange  turn  for  the  supernatural.     He  was  a  mut- 


terer  of  cliarms,  and  a  watcher  of  omens,  and  possessed  I't  was 
said,  the  second  sight.  I  collected  not  a  few  other  facts  of  a 
similar  kind,  and  thus  reasoned  regarding  them : — 

These  idiots  are  imperfect  men,  from  whose  minds  certain 
faculties  have  been  effaced,  and  other  faculties  left  to  exhibit 
themselves  all  the  more  prominently  from  the  circumstance  of 
their  standing  so  much  alone.  They  resemble  men  who  have 
lost  their  hands,  but  retain  their  feet,  or  who  have  lost  their 
sight  or  smell,  but  retain  their  taste  or  hearing.  But  as  the 
limbs  and  the  senses,  if  they  did  not  exist  as  separate  parts  of 
the  frame,  could  not  be  separately  lost,  so  in  the  mind  it- 
self, or  in  at  least  the  organization  through  which  the  mind 
manifests  itself,  there  must  also  be  separate  parts,  or  they 
would  not  be  thus  found  isolated  by  Nature  in  her  mutilated 
and  abortive  specimens.  Those  metaphysicians  who  deal  by 
the  mind  as  if  it  were  simply  a  general  power  existing  in  states, 
must  be  scarce  less  in  error  than  if  they  were  to  regard  the 
senses  as  merely  a  general  power  existing  in  states,  instead  of 
recognizing  them  as  distinct,  independent  powers,  so  various 
often  in  their  degree  of  development,  that,  from  the  full  perfection 
of  any  one  of  them,  the  perfection,  or  even  the  existence,  of  any 
of  the  others  cannot  be  predicated.  If,  for  instance,  it  were, 
— as  some  metaphysicians  hold, — the  same  general  warmth  of 
emotive  power  that  glows  in  benevolence  and  burns  in  resent- 
ment, the  fierce,  dangerous  idiot  that  killed  his  companion, 
and  the  kindly-dispositioned  Cromarty  one  who  takes  home 
pailfuls  of  water  to  the  poor  old  women  of  the  place,  and  parts 
with  his  own  toys  to  its  children,  would,  instead  of  thus  ex- 
hibiting the  opposite  poles  of  character,  at  least  so  far  resemble 
one  another,  that  the  vindictive  fool  would  at  times  be  kindly 
and  obliging,  and  the  benevolent  one  at  times  violent  and  re- 
sentful. But  such  is  not  the  case :  the  one  is  never  madly 
savage, — the  other  never  genial  and  kind ;  and  so  it  seems 
legitimate  to  infer,  that  it  is  not  a  general  power  or  energy  that 
acts  through  them  in  different  states,  but  two  particular  powers 
or  energies,  as  unlike  in  their  natures,  and  as  capable  of  acting 
apart,  as  seeing  and  hearing.     Even  powers  which  seem  to 


390  MY  SCHOOLS  AND   SCHOOLMASTERS  ; 

have  so  much  in  common,  that  the  same  words  are  sometimes 
made  use  of  in  reference  to  both,  may  be  as  distinct  as  smelling 
and  tasting.  We  speak  of  the  canning  workman,  and  we  speak 
of  the  cunning  man  ;  and  refer  to  a  certain  faculty  of  contrivance 
manifested  in  dealing  with  characters  and  affairs  on  the  part  of 
the  one,  and  in  dealing  with  certain  modifications  of  matter  on 
the  part  of  the  other;  but  so  entirely  different  are  the  two  facul- 
ties, and,  further,  so  little  dependent  are  they,  in  at  least  their 
first  elements,  on  intellect,  that  we  may  find  the  cunning  which 
manifests  itself  in  affairs,  existing,  as  in  Angus,  totally  dissoci- 
ated from  mechanical  skill ;  and,  on  the  other  hand,  the  cunning 
of  the  artisan,  existing,  as  in  the  idiot  of  the  Maolbuie,  totally 
dissociated  from  that  of  the  diplomatist.  In  short,  regarding 
idiots  as  persons  of  fragmentary  mind,  in  whom  certain  primary 
mental  elements  may  be  found  standing  out  in  a  state  of  great 
entireness,  and  all  the  more  striking  in  their  relief  from  the 
isolation,  I  came  to  view  them  as  bits  of  analysis,  if  I  may  so 
express  myself,  made  to  my  hand  by  Nature,  and  from  the 
study  of  which  I  could  conceive  of  the  structure  of  minds  of 
a  more  complete,  and  therefore  more  complex,  character.  As 
children  learn  the  alphabet  from  cards,  each  of  which  contains 
only  a  letter  or  two  a-piece,  printed  large,  I  held  at  this  time, 
and,  with  a  few  modifications,  hold  still,  that  those  primary 
sentiments  and  propensities  which  form  the  basis  of  character 
may  be  found  separately  stamped  in  the  same  way  on  the 
comparatively  blank  minds  of  the  imbecile ;  and  that  the 
student  of  mental  philosophy  might  learn  from  them  what 
may  be  regarded  as  the  alphabet  of  his  science,  much  more 
truthfully  than  from  those  metaphysicians  who  represent  mind 
as  a  power  not  manifested  in  contemporaneous  and  separable 
faculties,  but  as  existing  in  consecutive  states. 

Cromarty  had  been  fortunate  in  its  parish  ministers.  From 
the  death  of  its  last  curate,  shortly  after  the  Revolution,  and 
the  consequent  return  of  its  old  "  outed  minister,"  who  had 
resigned  his  living  for  conscience'  sake  twenty-eight  years  be- 
fore, and  new  came  to  spend  his  evening  of  life  with  his  people, 
it  had  enjoyed  the  services  of  a  series  of  devout  and  popular 


OK,   THE  STORY   OF   MY  EDUCATION.  391 

men ;  and  so  the  cause  of  the  Establishment  was  particularly 
strong  in  both  town  and  parish.  At  the  beginning  of  the 
present  century,  Cromarty  had  not  its  single  Dissenter ;  and 
though  a  few  of  what  were  known  as  "  Haldane's  people"* 
might  be  found  in  it,  some  eight  or  ten  years  later  they  failed 
in  effecting  a  lodgment,  and  ultimately  quitted  it  for  a  neigh- 
boring town.  Almost  all  the  Dissent  that  has  arisen  in  Scot- 
land since  the  Reformation  has  been  an  effect  of  Moderatism 
and  forced  settlements ;  and  as  the  place  had  known  neither, 
ts  people  continued  to  harbor  within  the  Church  of  their 
fathers,  nor  wished  to  change.  A  vacancy  had  occurred  in 
the  incumbency,  during  my  sojourn  in  the  south,  through  the 
death  of  the  incumbent,  the  respected  minister  of  my  child- 
hood and  youth ;  and  I  found,  on  my  return,  a  new  face  in 
the  pulpit.  It  was  that  of  a  remarkable  man, — the  late  Mr. 
Stewart  of  Cromarty, — one  of  at  once  the  most  original 
thinkers  and  profound  theologians  I  ever  knew ;  though  he 
has,  alas !  left  as  little  mark  of  his  exquisite  talent  behind 
him,  as  those  sweet  singers  of  former  ages,  the  memory  of 
whose  enchanting  notes  has  died,  save  as  a  doubtful  echo,  with 
the  generation  that  heard  them.  I  sat,  with  few  interruptions, 
for  sixteen  years  under  his  ministry ;  and  for  nearly  twelve 
of  these  enjoyed  his  confidence  and  friendship. 

I  never  could  press  myself  on  the  notice  of  superior  men, 
however  desirous  of  forming  their  acquaintance ;  and  have,  in 
consequence,  missed  opportunities  innumerable  of  coming  in 
friendly  contact  with  persons  whom  it  would  be  at  once  a  pleas- 
ure and  an  honor  to  know.  And  so,  for  the  first  two  years, 
or  rather  more,  I  was  content  to  listen  with  profound  attention, 
to  the  pulpit  addresses  of  my  new  minister,  and  to  appear  as  a 
catechumen,  when  my  turn  came,  at  his  diets  of  catechising. 
lie  had  been  struck,  however,  as  he  afterwards  told  me,  by  my 
sustained  attention  when  at  church ;  and,  on  making  h  quiry 
regarding  me  among  his  friends,  he  was  informed  that  I  was  a 
great  reader,  and,  it  was  believed,  a  writer  of  verse.  And  com- 
ing unwittingly  out  upon  him  one  day  as  he  was  passing,  when 
quitting  my  work-place  for  the  street,  he  addi  essed  me.  "  Well, 
lad,"  lit  said,  "  it  is  your  dinner  hour :  I  hear  I  have  a  poet 


392  MY  SCHOOLS    AND   SCHOOLMASTERS  ; 

among  my  people  ?"  "  I  doubt  it  much,"  I  replied.  "  Well," 
he  rejoined,  "  one  may  fall  short  of  being  a  poet,  and  yet  gain 
by  exercising  one's  tastes  and  talents  in  the  poetic  walk.  The 
accomplishment  of  verse  is  at  least  not  a  vulgar  one."  The 
conversation  went  on  as  we  passed  together  along  the  street ; 
and  he  stood  for  a  time  opposite  the  manse  door.  "  I  am 
forming,"  he  said,  "a  small  library  for  our  Sabbath-school 
scholars  and  teachers :  most  of  the  books  are  simple  enough 
little  things ;  but  it  contains  a  few  works  of  the  intellectual 
class.  Call  upon  me  this  evening,  that  we  may  look  over 
them,  and  you  may  perhaps  find  among  them  some  volumes 
you  would  wish  to  read."  I  accordingly  waited  upon  him  in 
the  evening ;  and  we  had  a  long  conversation  together.  He 
was,  I  saw,  curiously  sounding  me,  and  taking  my  measure  in 
all  directions  ;  or,  as  he  himself  afterwards  used  to  express  it 
in  his  characteristic  way,  he  was  like  a  traveller  who,  having 
come  unexpectedly  on  a  dark  pool  in  a  ford,  was  dipping  down 
his  staff,  to  ascertain  the  depth  of  the  water  and  the  nature  of 
the  bottom.  He  inquired  regarding  my  reading,  and  found 
that  in  the  belles  lettres,  especially  in  English  literature,  it  was 
about  as  extensive  as  his  own.  Pie  next  inquired  respecting 
my  acquaintance  with  the  metaphysicians.  "  Had  I  read 
Reid  ?"  "  Yes."  "  Brown  V '  "  Yes."  "  Hume  ? '  "  Yes." 
"  Ah  !  ha !  Hume  !  !  By  the  way,  has  he  not  something  very 
ingenious  about  miracles  ?  Do  you  remember  his  argument  V1 
I  stated  the  argument.  "  Ah,  very  ingenious, — most  ingenious. 
And  how  would  you  answer  that  ?"  I  said,  "  I  thought  1 
could  give  an  abstract  of  the  reply  of  Campbell,"  and  sketched 
in  outline  the  reverend  Doctor's  argument.  "  And  do  you 
deem  that  satisfactory  V  said  the  minister.  "  No,  not  at  all," 
I  replied,  "  No  !  no  !  !  that's  not  satisfactory."  "  But  perfectly 
satisfactory,"  I  rejoined,  "  that  such  is  the  general  partiality 
for  the  better  side,  that  the  worse  argument  has  been  received 
as  perfectly  adequate  for  the  last  sixty  years."  The  minister's 
face  gleamed  with  the  broad  fun  that  entered  so  largely  into 
his  composition,  and  the  conversation  shifted  into  other  chan- 
nels. 

From  that  night  forward  I  enjoyed  perhaps  more  of  his  con- 


393 

fidence  and  conversation  than  any  other  man  in  his  parish. 
Many  an  hour  did  he  spend  beside  me  in  the  churchyard,  and 
many  a  quiet  tea  did  I  enjoy  in  the  manse ;  and  I  learned  to 
know  how  much  solid  worth  and  true  wisdom  lay  under  the 
somewhat  eccentric  exterior  of  a  man  who  sacrificed  scarce 
anything  to  the  conventionalities.  This,  with  the  exception  of 
Chalmers,  sublimest  of  Scottish  preachers, — for,  little  as  he  was 
known,  I  will  challenge  for  him  that  place, — was  a  genial  man, 
who,  for  the  sake  of  a  joke,  would  sacrifice  anything  save  prin- 
ciple ;  but,  though  marvellously  careless  of  maintaining  intact 
the* "gloss  of  the  clerical  enamel,"  never  was  there  sincerity 
more  genuine  than  his,  or  a  more  thorough  honesty.  Content  to 
be  in  the  right,  he  never  thought  of  simulating  it,  and  sacrificed 
even  less  than  he  ought  to  appearances.  I  may  mention,  that 
on  coming  to  Edinburgh,  I  found  the  peculiar  taste  formed 
under  the  administration  of  Mr.  Stewart  most  thorough] y  grati- 
fied under  those  of  Dr.  Guthrie ;  and  that  in  looking  round 
the  congregation,  I  saw,  with  pleasure  rather  than  surprise, 
that  all  Mr.  Stewart's  people  resident  in  Edinburgh  had  come 
to  the  same  conclusion  ;  for  there — sitting  in  the  Doctor's 
pews — they  all  were.  Certainly  in  fertility  of  illustration,  in 
soul-stirring  evangelistic  doctrine,  and  in  a  genial  basis  of  rich 
humor,  the  resemblance  between  the  deceased  and  the  living 
minister  seems  complete  ;  but  genius  is  always  unique  ;  and 
while  in  breadth  of  popular  power,  Dr.  Guthrie  stands  alone 
among  living  preachers,  I  have  never  either  heard  or  read 
argument  in  the  analogical  field  that  in  ingenuity  or  origin- 
ality equalled  that  of  Mr.  Stewart. 

That  in  which  he  specially  excelled  all  the  men  I  ever  knew, 
was  the  power  of  detecting  and  establishing  occult  resem- 
blances. He  seemed  able  to  read  oft',  as  if  by  intuition, — not 
by  snatches  and  fragments,  but  as  a  consecutive  whole, — that 
old  revelation  of  type  and  symbol  which  God  first  gave  to  man ; 
and  when  privileged  to  listen  to  him,  I  have  been  constrained 
to  recognize,  in  the  evident  integrity  of  the  reading,  and  the 
profound  and  consistent  theological  system  which  the  pictorial 
record  conveyed,  a  demonstration  of  the  divinity  of  its  origin, 


394  MY   SCHOOLS   AND   SCHOOLMASTERS; 

not  less  powerful  and  convincing  than  the  demonstrations  of 
the  other  and  more  familiar  departments  of  the  Christian  evi- 
dences. Compared  with  other  theologians  in  this  province,  I 
have  felt  under  his  ministry  as  if,  when  admitted  to  the  com- 
pany of  some  party  of  modern  savans  employed  in  decypher- 
ing  a  hieroglyphic-covered  obelisk  of  the  desert,  and  here  suc- 
cessful in  discovering  the  meaning  of  an  insulated  sign,  and 
there  of  a  detached  symbol,  we  had  been  suddenly  joined  by 
some  sage  of  the  olden  time,  to  whom  the  mysterious  inscrip- 
tion was  but  a  piece  of  common  language  written  in  a  familiar 
alphabet,  and  who  could  read  off  fluently,  and  as  a  whole,  what 
the  others  could  but  darkly  guess  at  in  detached  and  broken 
parts.  To  this  singular  power  of  tracing  analogies  there  was 
added  in  Mr.  Stewart  an  ability  of  originating  the  most  vivid 
illustrations.  In  some  instances  a  s'idden  stroke  produced  a 
figure  that  at  once  illuminated  the  subject-matter  of  his  dis- 
course, like  the  light  of  a  lanthorn  flashed  hastily  upon  a  paint- 
ed wall;  in  others  he  dwelt  upon  an  illustrative  picture,  finish- 
ing it  with  stroke  after  stroke,  until  it  filled  the  whole  imagin- 
ation, and  sank  deep  into  the  memory.  I  remember  hearing 
him  preach,  on  one  occasion,  on  the  return  of  the  Jews  as  a 
people  to  Him  whom  they  had  rejected,  and  the  effect  which 
their  sudden  conversion  could  not  fail  to  have  on  the  unbe- 
lieving and  Gentile  world.  Suddenly  his  language,  from  its 
high  level  of  eloquent  simplicity,  became  that  of  metaphor. 
"  When  Joseph,"  he  said,  "  shall  reveal  himself  to  his  breth- 
ren, the  whole  house  of  Pharaoh  shall  hear  the  weeping."  On 
another  occasion  I  heard  him  dwell  on  that  vast  profundity, 
characteristic  of  the  scriptural  revelation  of  God,  which  ever 
deepens  and  broadens  the  longer  and  more  thoroughly  it  is  ex- 
plored, until  at  length  the  student — struck  at  first  by  its  ex 
pansiveness,  but  conceiving  of  it  as  if  it  were  a  mere  measuret 
expansiveness — finds  that  it  partakes  of  the  unlimited  infinity 
of  the  Divine  nature  itself.  Naturally  and  simply,  as  if  grow- 
ing out  of  the  subject,  like  a  berry-covered  mistletoe  out  of  the 
massy  trunk  of  an  oak,  there  sprung  up  one  of  his  more  length- 
ened illustrations.     A  child  bred  up  in  the  interior  of  the 


395 

country  has  been  brought  for  the  first  time  to  the  sea-shore, 
and  carried  out  into  the  middle  of  one  of  the  noble  friths  that 
indent  so  deeply  our  line  of  coast.  And,  on  his  return,  he  de- 
scribes to  his  father,  with  all  a  child's  eagerness,  the  wonderful 
expansiveness  of  the  ocean  which  he  had  seen.  He  went  out, 
he  tells  him,  far  amid  the  great  waves  and  the  rushing  tides, 
until  at  length  the  hills  seemed  diminished  into  mere  hum- 
mocKS,  and  the  wide  land  itself  appeared  along  the  waters  but 
as  a  slim  strip  of  blue.  And  then,  when  in  mid-sea,  the  sailors 
heaved  the  lead ;  and  it  went  down,  and  down,  and  down, — ■ 
and  the  long  line  slipped  swiftly  away,  coil  after  coil,  till,  ere 
the  plummet  rested  on  the  ooze  below,  all  was  well  nigh  ex- 
pended. And  was  it  not  the  great  sea,  asks  the  boy,  that  was 
so  vastly  broad,  and  so  profoundly  deep  1  Ah  !  my  child,  ex- 
claims the  father,  you  have  not  seen  aught  of  its  greatness : 
you  have  sailed  over  merely  one  of  its  little  arms.  Had  it 
been  out  into  the  wide  ocean  that  the  seamen  had  carried  you, 
"  you  would  have  seen  no  shore,  and  you  would  have  found 
no  bottom."  In  one  rare  quality  of  the  orator,  Mr.  Stewart 
stood  alone  among  his  contemporaries.  Pope  refers  to  a  strange 
power  of  creating  love  and  admiration  by  "just  touching  the 
brink  of  all  we  hate."  And  Burke,  in  some  of  his  nobler  pas- 
sages, happily  exemplifies  the  thing.  He  intensified  the  effect 
of  his  burning  eloquence  by  the  employment  of  figures  so 
homely, — nay,  almost  so  repulsive, — that  the  man  of  lower 
powers  who  ventured  on  their  use  would  find  them  effective 
in  but  lowering  his  subject,  and  ruining  his  cause.  I  need  but 
refer,  in  illustration,  to  the  well-known  figure  of  the  disem- 
bowelled bird,  which  occurs  in  the  indignant  denial  that  the 
character  of  the  revolutionary  French  in  aught  resembled  that 
of  the  English.  "  We  have  not,"  says  the  orator,  "  been  drawn 
and  trussed,  in  order  that  we  may  be  filled,  like  stuffed  birds  in 
a  museum,  with  chaff,  and  rags,  and  paltry  blurred  shreds  of 
paper  about  the  rights  of  man."  Into  this  perilous  but  sin- 
gularly effective  department,  closed  against  even  superior  men, 
Mr  Stewart  could  enter  safely  and  at  will.  One  of  the  last 
sermons  I  heard  him  preach, — a  discourse  of  singular  power, 
18 


396  MY  SCHOOLS  AND   SCHOOLMASTERS; 

— was  on  the  "  Sin  Offering"  of  the  Jewish  economy,  as  mi- 
nutely described  in  Leviticus.  He  drew  a  picture  of  the 
slaughtered  animal,  foul  with  dust  and  blood,  and  steaming,  in 
its  impurity,  to  the  sun,  as  it  awaited  the  consuming  fire  amid 
the  uncleanness  of  ashes  outside  the  camp — its  throat  gashed 
across, — its  entrails  laid  open  ;  a  vile  and  horrid  thing,  which 
no  one  could  see  without  experiencing  emotions  of  disgust, 
nor  touch  without  contracting  defilement.  The  description 
ppeared  too  painfully  vivid, — its  introduction  too  little  in  ac- 
cordance with  the  rules  of  a  just  taste.  But  the  master  in  this 
difficult  walk  knew  what  he  was  doing.  And  that,  he  said, 
pointing  to  the  strongly-colored  picture  he  had  just  completed, 
— "  And  that  is  sin."  By  one  stroke  the  intended  effect 
was  produced,  and  the  rising  disgust  and  horror  transferred 
from  the  revolting  material  image  to  the  great  moral  evil. 

How  could  such  a  man  pass  from  earth,  and  leave  no  trace 
behind  him  1  Mainly,  I  believe,  from  two  several  causes. 
As  the  minister  of  an  attached  provincial  congregation,  a  sense 
of  duty,  and  the  promptings  of  a  highly-intellectual  nature,  to 
which  exertion  was  enjoyment,  led  him  to  study  much  and 
deeply  ;  and  he  poured  forth  viva  voce  his  full-volumed  and 
ever-sparkling  tide  of  eloquent  idea,  as  freely  and  richly  as 
the  nightingale,  unconscious  of  a  listener,  pours  forth  her  mel- 
ody in  the  shade.  But,  strangely  diffident  of  his  own  powrers,  he 
could  not  be  made  to  believe  that  what  so  much  impressed  and 
delighted  the  privileged  few  who  surrounded  him,  wras  equally 
suited  to  impress  and  delight  the  intellectual  many  outside ;  or 
that  he  was  fitted  to  speak  through  the  press  in  tones  which 
would  compel  the  attention,  not  merely  of  the  religious,  but  also 
of  the  literary  world.  Further,  practising  but  little  the  art  of 
elaborate  composition,  and  master  of  a  spoken  style  more  effect- 
ive for  the  purposes  of  the  pulpit  than  almost  any  written  one, 
save  that  of  Chalmers,  he  failed,  in  all  his  attemps  in  writing, 
to  satisfy  a  fastidious  taste,  which  he  had  suffered  greatly  to 
outgrow  his  ability  of  production.  And  so  he  failed  to  leave 
any  adequate  mark  behind  him.  I  find  that  for  my  stock  of 
theological  idea,  not  directly  derived  from  Scripture,  I  stand 


OR,    THE   STORY   OF   MY  EDUCATION.  d97 

more  indebted  to  two  Scotch  theologians  than  to  all  other 
men  of  their  profession  and  class.  The  one  of  these  was 
Thomas  Chalmers, — the  other,  Alexander  Stewart :  the  one  a 
name  known  wherever  the  English  language  is  spoken; 
while  of  the  other  it  is  only  remembered,  and  by  com- 
paratively  a  few,  that  the  impression  did  exist  at  the  time 
of  his  death,  that 

"  A  mighty  spirit  was  eclipsed,— a  power 
Had  passed  from  day  to  darkness,  to  whose  hour 
Of  light  no  likeness  was  bequeathed,— no  name." 


898  MY   SCHOOLS  AND    SCHOOLMASTERS; 


CHAPTER  XIX. 


"  See  yonder  poor  o'er-labor'd  wight, 

So  abject,  mean,  and  vile, 

Who  begs  a  brother  of  the  earth 

To  give  him  leave  to  toil ; 

And  see  his  lordy  fellow-worm 

The  poor  petition  ?purn." 

Burns. 

Work  failed  me  about  the  end  of  June  1828  ;  a. id,  acting  on 
the  advice  of  a  friend  who  believed  that  my  style  of  cutting  in- 
scriptions could  not  fail  to  secure  for  me  a  good  many  little 
jobs  in  the  churchyard  of  Inverness,  I  visited  that  place,  and 
inserted  a  brief  advertisement  in  one  of  the  newspapers,  so- 
liciting employment.  I  ventured  to  characterize  my  style  of 
engraving  as  neat  and  correct ;  laying  especial  emphasis  on  the 
correctness,  as  a  quality  not  very  common  among  the  stone- 
cutters of  the  north.  It  was  not  a  Scotch,  but  an  English 
mason,  who,  when  engaged,  at  the  instance  of  a  bereaved 
widower,  in  recording  on  his  wife's  tombstone  that  a  "  virtuous 
woman  is  a  crown  to  her  husband,"  corrupted  the  text,  in  his 
simplicity,  by  substituting  "  5s."  for  the  "  crown?  But  even 
Scotch  masons  do  make  odd  enough  mistakes  at  times,  espe- 
cially in  the  provinces  ;  and  I  felt  it  would  be  something  gain- 
ed could  I  but  get  an  opportunity  of  showing  the  Inverness 
public  that  I  had  at  least  English  enough  to  avoid  the  com- 
moner errors.  My  verses,  thought  I,  are  at  least  tolerably  cor- 
rect :    could  I  not  get  some  one  or  two  copies  introduced  into 


899 

the  poet's  corner  of  the  Inverness  Courier  or  Journal,  and  thus 
show  that  I  have  literature  enough  to  be  trusted  with  the  cut- 
ting of  an  epitath  on  a  gravestone  1  I  had  a  letter  of  intro- 
duction from  a  friend  in  Cromarty  to  one  of  the  ministers  of 
the  place,  himself  an  author,  and  a  person  of  influence  with  the 
proprietors  of  the  Courier  ;  and,  calculating  on  some  amount 
of  literary  sympathy  from  a  person  accustomed  to  court  the 
public  through  the  medium  of  the  press,  I  thought  I  might 
just  venture  on  stating  the  case  to  him.  I  first,  however 
wrote  a  brief  address,  in  octo-syllabic  quatrains,  to  the  rivei 
which  flows  through  the  town,  and  gives  to  it  its  name ; — a 
composition  which  has,  I  find,  more  of  the  advertisement  in  it 
than  is  quite  seemly,  but  which  would  have  perhaps  expressed 
less  confidence  had  it  been  written  less  under  the  influence  of 
a  shrinking  timidity,  that  tried  to  re-assure  itself  by  words  of 
comfort  and  encouragement. 

I  was  informed  that  the  minister's  hour  for  receiving  vis- 
itors of  the  humbler  class  was  between  eleven  and  twelve  at 
noon ;  and,  with  the  letter  of  introduction  and  my  copy  of 
verses  in  my  pocket,  I  called  at  the  manse,  and  was  shown 
into  a  little  narrow  ante-room,  furnished  with  two  seats  of 
deal  that  ran  along  the  opposite  walls.  I  found  the  place  oc- 
cupied  by  some  six  or  seven  individuals, — more  than  half  that 
number  old  withered  women,  in  very  shabby  habiliments,  who, 
as  I  soon  learned  from  a  conversation  which  they  kept  up  in  a 
grave  under-tone,  about  weekly  allowances,  and  the  partialities 
of  the  session,  were  paupers.  The  others  were  young  men,  who 
had  apparently  serious  requests  to  prefer  anent  marriage  and 
baptism ;  for  I  saw  that  one  of  them  was  ever  and  anon  draw- 
ing from  his  breast-pocket  a  tattered  copy  of  the  Shorter  Cate- 
chism, and  running  over  the  questions ;  and  I  overheard  an 
other  asking  his  neighbor,  "  Who  drew  up  the  contract  lines 
for  him  f  and  "  Where  he  had  got  the  whisky  ?"  The  min- 
ister entered ;  and  as  he  passed  into  the  inner  room,  we  all 
rose.  He  stood  for  a  moment  in  the  doorway,  and,  beckoning 
on  one  of  the  young  men, — he  of  the  Catechism, — they  went 
in  together,  and  the  door  closed.     They  remain  closeted  to- 


400  MY   SCHOOLS   AND    SCHOOLMASTERS  ; 

gethor  for  about  twenty  minutes  or  half  an  hour,  and  then  the 
young  man  went  out ;  and  another  young  man, — he  who  had 
procured  the  contract  lines  and  the  whisky, — took  his  place. 
The  interview  in  this  second  case,  however,  was  much  shorter 
than  the  first ;  and  a  very  few  minutes  served  to  despatch  the 
business  of  the  third  young  man  ;  and  then  the  minister,  com- 
ing to  the  doorway,  looked  first  at  the  old  women  and  then  at 
me,  as  if  mentally  determining  our  respective  claims  to  pri- 
ority ;  and  mine  at  length  prevailing, — I  know  not  on  what 
occult  principle, — I  was  beckoned  in.  I  presented  my  letter 
of  introduction,  which  was  graciously  read ;  and  though  the 
nature  of  the  business  did  strike  me  as  ludicrously  out  of 
keeping  with  the  place,  and  it  did  cost  me  some  little  trouble 
to  suppress  at  one  time  a  burst  of  laughter,  that  would,  of 
course,  have  been  prodigiously  improper  in  the  circumstances, 
I  detailed  to  him  in  a  few  words  my  little  plan,  and  handed 
him  my  copy  of  verses.  He  read  them  aloud  with  slow  de- 
liberation. 

ODE  TO  THE  NESS. 

Child  of  the  lake!*  whose  silvery  gleam 

Cheers  the  rough  desert,  dark  and  loue, — 
A  brown,  deep,  sullen,  restless  stream, 

With  ceaseless  speed  thou  hurriest  on. 
And  yet  thy  banks  with  flowers  are  gay  ; 

The  sun  laughs  on  thy  ample  breast ; 
And  o'er  thy  tidt-s  the  zephyrs  play, 

Though  nought  be  thine  of  quiet  rest. 

Stream  of  the  lake!  to  him  who  strays, 

Lonely,  thy  winding  marge  along, 
Not  fraught  with  lore  of  other  days, 

And  yet  not  all  unblest  in  song, — 
To  him  thou  tell'st  of  busy  men, 

Who  madly  waste  their  present  day, 
Pursuing  hopes,  baseless  as  vain, 

While  life,  untested,  glides  away. 


Loch  Ness, 


401 

Stream  of  the  lake!  why  hasten  on? 

A  boisl'rous  ocean  spreads  before, 
Where  dash  dark  tides,  and  wild  winds  moan, 

And  foam-wreaths  skirt  a  cheerless  shore. 
Nor  bending  flowers,  nor  waving  fields, 

Nor  aught  of  rest  is  there  for  thee  ; 
But  rest  to  thee  no  pleasure  yields; 

Then  haste  and  join  the  stormy  sea ! 

Stream  of  the  lake!  of  bloody  men. 

Who  thirst  the  guilty  fight  to  try,— 
Who  seek  for  joy  in  mortal  pain, 

Music  in  misery's  thrilling  cry,-- 
Thou  tell'st :  peace  yields  no  joy  to  them, 

Nor  harmless  Pleasure's  golden  smile; 
Of  evil  deed  the  cheerless  fame 

Is  all  the  meed  that  crowns  their  toil. 

Not  such  would  prove, — if  Pleasure  shone, — 

Stfeam  of  the  deep  and  peaceful  lake ! 
His  course,  whom  Hardship  urges  on, 

Through  cheerless  waste  and  thorny  brake. 
For,  ah  !  each  pleasing  scene  he  loves, 

And  peace  is  all  his  heart's  desire; 
And,  ah !  of  scenes  where  Pleasure  roves, 

And  Peace,  could  gentle  minstrel  tire  ? 

Stream  of  the  lake !  for  thee  await 

The  tempests  of  an  angry  main  ; 
A  brighter  hope,  a  happier  fate, 

He  boasts,  whose  present  course  is  pain. 
Yes,  ev'n  for  him  may  death  prepare 

A  home  of  pleasure,  peace,  and  love; 
Thus  blessed  by  hope,  little  his  care, 

Though  rough  his  present  course  may  prove. 

The  minister  paused  as  he  coneluded,  and  looked  puzzled 
"  Pretty  well,  I  dare  say,"  he  said  ;  "  but  I  do  not  now  read 
poetry.  You,  however,  use  a  word  that  is  not  English, — '  Thy 
winding  mwge  along.'  Marge! — what  is  marge V  "You 
will  find  it  in  Johnson,"  I  said.  "  Ah,  but  we  must  not  <iso 
all  the  words  we  find  in  Johnson."  "But  the  poets  make 
frequent  use  of  it,"  "  What  poets  T  "Spenser."  "Too 
old, — too  old:  no  authority  now,"  said  the  minister.  "But 
the  Wartons  also  use  it."  "  I  don't  know  the  Wartons. "'  "  It 
occurs  also,"  I  iterated,  '  in  one  of  the  most  finished  sonnets 


402 

of  Henry  Kirke  White."  "  What  sonnet  ?"  "  That  to  the 
river  Trent. 

'Once  more,  O  Trenl !  along  thy  pebbly  Marge, 
A  pensive  invalid,  reduced  and  pale, 
From  the  close  sick  room  newly  set  at  large, 
Woos  to  his  woe-worn  cheek  the  pleasant  gale.' 

It  is,  in  short,  one  of  the  common  English  words  of  the  poetic 
vocabulary."  Could  a  man  in  quest  of  patronage,  and  actual- 
ly at  the  time  soliciting  a  favor,  possibly  contrive  to  say  any- 
thing more  imprudent?  And  this,  too,  to  a  gentleman  so 
much  accustomed  to  be  deferred  to  when  he  took  up  his 
ground  on  the  Standards,  as  sometimes  to  forget,  through  the 
sheer  force  of  habit,  that  he  was  not  a  standard  himself!  lie 
colored  to  the  eyes ;  and  his  condescending  humility,  which 
seemed,  I  thought,  rather  too  great  for  the  occasion,  and  was 
of  a  kind  which  my  friend  Mr.  Stewart  never  used  to  exhibit, 
appeared  somewhat  ruffled.  I  have  no  acquaintance,  he  said, 
with  the  editor  of  the  Courier  :  we  take  opposite  sides  in  very 
important  questions ;  and  I  cannot  recommend  your  verses  to 

him ;  but  call  on  Mr. ;  he  is  one  of  the  proprietors ; 

and,  with  my  compliments,  state  your  case  to  him  :  he  will  be 
perhaps  able  to  assist  you.  Meanwhile,  I  wish  you  all  suc- 
cess. The  minister  hurried  me  out,  and  one  of  the  withered 
old  women  was  called  in.  "  This,"  I  said  to  myself,  as  I  step- 
ped into  the  street,  "  is  the  sort  of  patronage  which  letters  of 
introduction  procure  for  one.  I  don't  think  I'll  seek  any  more 
of  it." 

Meeting  on  the  street,  however,  with  two  Cromarty  friends, 
one  of  whom  was  just  going  to  call  on  the  gentleman  named 
by  the  minister,  he  induced  me  to  accompany  him.  The 
other  said,  as  he  took  his  separate  way,  that,  having  come  to 
visit  an  old  townsman  settled  in  Inverness,  a  man  of  some  in- 
fluence in  the  burgh,  he  would  state  my  case  to  him ;  and  he 
was  sure  he  would  exert  himself  to  procure  me  employment. 
I  have  already  referred  to  the  remark  of  Burns.  It  is  record- 
ed by  his  brother  Gilbert,  that  the  poet  used  often  to  say, 
"That  h<?  could  not  well  conceive  a  more  mortifying  picture 


403 

of  human  life,  than  a  man  seeking  work ;"  and  that  the  ex- 
quisite Dirge,  ;  Man  was  made  to  Mourn,"  owes  its  existence 
to  the  sentiment.  The  feeling  is  certainly  a  very  depressing 
one ;  and  as  on  most  other  occasions  work  rather  sought  me 
than  I  the  work,  I  experienced  more  of  it  at  this  time  than  at 
any  other  period  of  my  life.  I,  of  course,  could  hardly  ex- 
pect that  people  should  die  off  and  require  epitaphs  merely  to 
accommodate  me.  That  demand  of  employment  as  a  right  in 
all  cases  and  circumstances,  which  the  more  extreme  "  claims- 
of-labor  men"  do  not  scruple  to  urge,  is  the  result  of  a  sort 
of  indignant  re-action  on  this  feeling, — a  feeling  which  be- 
came poetry  in  Burns  and  nonsense  in  the  Communists ;  but 
which  I  experienced  neither  as  nonsense  nor  poetry,  but  sim- 
ply as  a  depressing  conviction  that  I  was  one  man  too  many 
in  the  world.  The  gentleman  on  whom  I  now  called  with 
my  friend  was  a  person  both  of  business  habits  and  literary 
tastes ;  but  I  saw  that  my  poetic  scheme  rather  damaged  me 
in  his  estimation.  The  English  verse  produced  at  this  time 
in  the  far  north  was  of  a  kind  ill  fitted  for  the  literary  market, 
and  usually  published,  or  rather  printed, — for  published  it 
never  was, — by  that  teasing  subscription  scheme  which  so 
often  robs  men  of  good  money,  and  gives  them  bad  books  in 
exchange ;  and  he  seemed  to  set  me  down  as  one  of  the  annoy- 
ing semi-beggar  class; — rather  a  mistake,  I  should  hope.  He, 
however,  obligingly  introduced  me  to  a  gentleman  of  literature 
and  science,  the  secretary  of  a  society  of  the  place,  antiquarian 
and  scientific  in  its  character,  termed  the  "  Northern  Institu- 
tion," and  the  honorary  conservator  of  its  museum, — an  in- 
teresting miscellaneous  collection,  which  I  had  previously  seen, 
and  in  connection  with  which  I  had  formed  my  only  other 
scheme  of  getting  into  employment. 

I  wrote  that  old  Eng.ish  hand  which  has  been  revived  of 
late  by  the  general  rage  for  the  mediaeval,  but  which  at  that 
time  was  one  of  the  lost  arts,  with  much  neatness ;  and  could 
produce  imitations  of  the  illuminated  manuscripts  that  pre- 
ceded our  printed  books,  which  even  an  antiquary  would  have 
pronounced  respectable.    And,  addressing  the  members  of  the 


404  MY  SCHOOLS  AKD  SCHOOLMASTERS; 

Northeri  .institution  on  the  character  and  tendency  of  their 
pursuits,  in  a  somewhat  lengthy  piece  of  verse,  written  in  what 
I  at  least  intended  to  be  the  manner  of  Dryden,  as  exemplified 
in  his  middle-style  poems,  such  as  the  Religio  Laid;  I  en- 
grossed it  in  the  old  hand,  and  now  called  on  the  Secretary  to 
request  that  he  would  present  it  at  the  first  meeting  of  the  So- 
ciety, which  was  to  hold,  I  understood,  in  a  few  days.  The 
Secretary  was  busy  at  his  desk  ;  but  he  received  me  politely, 
spoke  approvingly  of  my  work  as  an  imitation  of  the  old 
manuscript,  and  obligingly  charged  himself  with  its  delivery 
at  the  meeting ;  and  so  we  parted  for  the  time,  not  in  the  least 
aware  that  there  was  a  science  which  dealt  with  characters 
greatly  more  ancient  than  those  of  the  old  manuscripts,  and 
laden  with  profounder  meanings,  in  which  we  both  took  a 
deep  interest,  and  regarding  which  we  could  have  exchanged 
facts  and  ideas  with  mutual  pleasure  and  profit.  The  Secre- 
tary of  the  Northern  Institution  at  this  time  was  Mr.  George 
Anderson,  the  well-known  geologist,  and  joint  author  with  his 
brother  of  the  admirable  "  Guide-Book  to  the  Highlands," 
which  bears  their  name.  I  never  heard  how  my  address 
fared.  It  would,  of  course,  have  been  tabled, — looked  at,  I 
suppose,  for  a  few  seconds  by  a  member  or  two, — and  then 
set  aside ;  and  it  is  probably  still  in  the  archives  of  the  Insti- 
tution, awaiting  the  light  of  future  ages,  when  its  simulated 
antiquity  shall  have  become  real.  It  was  not  written  in  a 
character  to  be  read,  nor,  I  fear,  very  readable  in  any  charac- 
ter ;  and  so  the  members  of  the  Institution  must  have  remained 
ignorant  of  all  the  wisdom  I  had  found  in  their  pursuits,  anti- 
quarian and  ethnological.  The  following  forms  an  average 
specimen  of  the  production  : — 

"  'Tis  yours  to  (race 
Each  deep-fixed  trait  that  marks  the  human  race  ; 
And  as  the  Egyptian  priests,  with  mystery  fraught, 
By  signs,  not  words,  of  Sphynx  and  Horus  taught, 
So,  'mid  your  stores,  by  things,  not  book-°,  ye  scan 
The  powers  and  history  of  the  mind  of  man. 
Yon  chequered  wall  displays  the  arms  of  war 
Of  times  remote  and  nations  distant  far: 


405 


Alas!  the  club  and  brand  but  serve  to  sh<  w 
How  wide  extends  the  reign  of  wrong  and  woe. 
Yes!  all  that  man  has  framed  his  image  bears; 
And  much  of  hate,  and  much  of  pride,  appears. 

"  Pleasant  it  is  each  diverse  step  to  scan, 
By  which  the  savage  first  assumes  the  man; 
To  mark  what  feelings  sway  his  softening  breast, 
Or  what  strong  ]*ission  triumphs  o'er  the  rest. 
Narrow  of  heart,  or  free,  or  brave,  or  base, 
Ev'n  in  the  infant  we  the  man  may  trace  ; 
And  from  the  rude  ungainly  sires  may  know 
Each  striking  trait  the  polished  sons  shall  show. 
Dependent  on  what  moods  assume  the  reign, 
Science  shall  smile,  or  spread  her  stores  in  vain: 
As  coward  fears  or  geLeious  passions  sway, 
Shall  freedom  reign,  or  heartless  slaves  obey. 

"Not  unto  chance  must  aught  of  power  be  given, — 
K  country's  genius  is  the  gift  of  Heaven. 
What  warms  the  poet's  lays  with  generous  fire, 
To  which  no  toil  can  reach,  no  art  aspire? 
Who  taught  the  sage,  with  deepest  wisdom  fraught, 
While  scarce  one  pupil  grasps  the  ponderous  thought  ? 
Nay,  wherefore  ask  ? — as  Heaven  the  mind  bestows, 
A  Napier  calculates  and  a  Thomson  glows. 
Now  turn  to  where,  beneath  the  city  wall, 
The  sun's  fierce  rays  in  unbroke  splendor  fall; 
Vacant  and  weak  there  sits  the  idiot  boy, 
Of  pain  scarce  conscious,  scarce  alive  to  joy; 
A  thousand  busy  sounds  around  him  roar; 
Trade  wields  the  tool,  and  Commerce  plies  the  oar ; 
But,  all  unheeding  of  the  restless  scene, 
Of  toil  he  nothing  knows,  and  nought  of  gain: 
The  thoughts  of  common  minds  were  strange  to  him, 
Ev'n  as  to  such  a  Napier's  thoughts  would  seem. 
Thus,  as  in  men,  in  peopled  states,  we  find 
Unequal  powers,  and  varied  tones  of  mind; 
Timid  or  dauntless,  high  of  thought  or  low, 
O'erwhelm'd  with  phlegm,  or  fraught  with  fire  ther  glow 
And  as  the  sculptor's  art  is  better  shown 
In  Parian  marble  than  in  porous  stone, 
Wreaths  fresh  or  sear'd  repay  refinement's  toil, 
As  genius  owns  or  dulness  stamps  the  soil. 
Where  isles  of  coral  stud  the  southern  main, 
And  painted  kings  and  cinctur'd  warrior  reign. 
Nations  there  are  who  native  worth  possess, — 
Whom  every  art  shall  court,  each  science  bless; 
And  tribes  there  are,  heavy  of  heart  and  slow, 
On  whom  no  coming  age  a  change  shall  know." 


406  MY  SCHOOLS  AND   SCHOOLMASTERS; 

There  wa^,  I  suspect,  a  waste  of  effort  in  all  this  planning ; 
but  some  men  seem  destined  to  do  things  clumsily  and  ill,  at 
many  times  the  expense  which  serves  to  secure  success  to  the 
more  adroit.  I  despatched  my  Ode  to  the  newspaper,  accom- 
panied by  a  letter  of  explanation  ;  but  it  fared  as  ill  as  my 
Address  to  the  Institution  ;  and  a  single  line  in  italics  in  the 
next  number  intimated  that  it  was  not  to  appear.  And  thus 
both  my  schemes  were,  as  they  ought  to  be,  knocked  on  the 
head.  I  have  not  schemed  any  since.  Strategy  is,  I  fear,  not 
my  forte ;  and  it  is  idle  to  attempt  doing  in  spite  of  nature 
what  one  has  not  been  born  to  do  well.  Besides,  I  began  to 
6e  seriously  dissatisfied  with  myself:  there  seemed  to  be  no- 
thing absolutely  wrong  in  a  man  who  wanted  honest  employ- 
ment taking  this  way  of  showing  he  wras  capable  of  it;  but  I 
felt  the  spirit  within  rise  against  it ;  and  so  I  resolved  to  ask 
no  more  favors  of  any  one,  even  should  poets'  corners  re- 
main shut  against  me  forever,  or  however  little  Institutions, 
literary  or  scientific,  might  favor  me  with  their  notice.  I 
strode  along  the  streets,  half  an  inch  taller  on  the  strength  of 
the  resolution ;  and  straightway,  as  if  to  reward  me  for  my 
magnanimity,  an  offer  of  employment  came  my  way  unsolic- 
ited. I  was  addressed  by  a  recruiting  serjeant  of  a  High- 
land regiment,  who  asked  me  if  I  did  not  belong  to  the  Aird  1 
"  No,  not  to  the  Aird ;  to  Cromarty,"  I  replied.  "  Ah,  to 
Cromarty, — very  fine  place!  But  would  you  not  better  bid 
adieu  to  Cromarty,  and  come  along  with  mel  We  have  a 
capital  grenadier  company  ;  and  in  our  regiment  a  stout  steady 
man  is  always  sure  to  get  on."  I  thanked  him,  but  declined 
his  invitation ;  and,  with  an  apology  on  his  part,  which  was 
not  in  the  least  needed  or  expected,  we  parted. 

Though  verse  and  old  English  failed  me,  the  simple  state- 
ment made  by  my  Cromarty  friend  to  my  townsman  located 
in  Inverness,  that  I  was  a  good  workman,  and  wanted  work, 
procured  me  at  once  the  cutting  of  an  inscription,  and  two 
little  jobs  in  Cromarty  besides,  which  I  was  to  execute  on  my 
return  home.  The  Inverness  job  was  soon  completed ;  but  I 
had  the  near  prospect  of  another ;  and  as  the  little  bit  of  the 
public  that  came  my  way  approved  of  my  cutting,  I  trusted 


Oil,    THE   STORY   OF   MY   EDUCATION.  407 

employment  would  flow  in  apace.  T  lodged  with  a  worthy 
old  widow,  conscientious  and  devout,  and  ever  doing  her  hum- 
ble work  consciously  in  the  eye  of  the  Great  Taskmaster, — 
one  of  a  class  of  persons  not  at  all  so  numerous  in  the  world 
as  might  be  desirable,  but  sufficiently  common  to  render  it 
rather  a  marvel  that  some  of  our  modern  masters  of  fiction 
should  never  have  chanced — judging  from  their  writings — to 
come  in  contact  with  any  of  them.  She  had  an  only  son,  a 
working  cabinetmaker,  who  used  occasionally  to  annoy  her 
by  his  silly  jokes  at  serious  things,  and  who  was  courting  at 
this  time  a  sweetheart  who  had  five  hundred  pounds  in  the 
bank, — an  immensely  large  sum  to  a  man  in  his  circumstances. 
He  had  urged  his  suit  with  such  apparent  success,  that  the 
marriage-day  was  fixed  and  at  hand,  and  the  house  which  he 
had  engaged  as  his  future  residence  fully  furnished.  And  it 
was  his  prospective  brother-in-law  who  was  to  be  my  new 
employer,  so  soon  as  the  wedding  should  leave  him  leisure 
enough  to  furnish  epitaphs  for  two  tombstones  recently  placed 
in  the  family  burying-ground.  The  wedding-day  arrived; 
and,  to  be  out  of  the  way  of  the  bustle  and  the  pageant,  I  re- 
tired to  the  house  of  a  neighbor,  a  carpenter,  whom  I  had 
obliged  by  a  few  lessons  in  practical  geometry  and  architec- 
tural drawing.  The  carpenter  was  at  the  wedding ;  and,  with 
the  whole  house  to  myself,  I  was  engaged  in  writing,  when  up 
flew  the  door,  and  in  rushed  my  pupil  the  carpenter.  "  What 
has  happened  1"  I  asked.  "  Happened  !"  said  the  carpenter, 
— "  Happened ! !  The  bride's  away  with  another  man  ! !  The 
bridegroom  has  taken  to  his  bed,  and  raves  like  a  madman ; 
and  his  poor  old  mother — good  honest  woman — is  crying  like 
a  child.  Do  come,  and  see  what  can  be  done."  I  accompa- 
nied him  to  my  landlady's,  where  I  found  the  bridegroom  in  a 
paroxysm  of  mingled  grief  and  rage,  congratulating  himself 
on  his  escape,  and  bemoaning  his  unhappy  disappointment,  by 
turns.  He  lay  athwart  the  bed,  which  he  told  me  in  the  morn- 
ing he  had  quitted  for  the  last  time  ;  but  as  I  entered,  he  half 
rose,  and,  seizing  on  a  pair  of  new  shoes  which  had  been 
prepared   for  the  bride,  and  lay  on  a  table  beside  him,  he 


408  MY  SCHOOLS  AND   SCHOOLMASTERS; 

hurled  them  against  the  wall,  first  the  one  and  then  the  Uher, 
until  they  came  rebounding  back  across  the  room ;  and  then, 
with  an  exclamation  that  need  not  be  repeated,  he  dashed 
himself  down  again.  1  did  my  best  to  comfort  his  poor  mother, 
who  seemed  to  feel  very  keenly  the  slight  done  to  her  son, 
and  lo  anticipate  with  dread  the  scandal  and  gossip  of  which  it 
would  render  her  humble  household  the  subject.  She  seemed 
sensible,  however,  that  he  had  made  an  escape,  and  at  once 
icquiesced  in  my  suggestion,  that  all  that  should  now  be  done 
would  be  to  get  every  expense  her  son  had  been  at  in  his  prep- 
arations for  housekeeping  and  the  wedding,  transferred  to  the 
shoulders  of  the  other  party.  And  such  an  arrangement  could, 
I  thought,  be  easily  effected  through  the  bride's  brother,  who 
seemed  to  be  a  reasonable  man,  and  who  would  be  aware  also 
that  a  suit  at  law  could  be  instituted  in  the  case  against  his 
sister ;  though  in  any  such  suit  I  held  it  might  be  best  for  both 
parties  not  to  engage.  And  at  the  old  woman's  request,  I  set 
out  with  the  carpenter  to  wait  on  the  bride's  brother,  in  order 
to  see  whether  he  was  not  prepared  for  some  such  arrangement 
as  I  suggested,  and,  besides,  able  to  furnish  us  with  some  ex- 
planation of  the  extraordinary  step  taken  by  the  bride. 

We  were  overtaken,  as  we  passed  along  the  street,  by  a 
person  who  was,  he  said,  in  search  of  us,  and  who  now  re- 
quested us  to  accompany  him  ;  and,  threading  our  way,  under 
his  guidance,  through  a  few  narrow  lanes  that  traverse  the  as- 
semblage of  houses  on  the  west  bank  of  the  Ness,  we  stopped 
at  the  door  of  an  obscure  alehouse.  This,  said  our  conductor, 
we  have  found  to  be  the  retreat  of  the  bride.  He  ushered,  us 
into  a  room  occupied  by  some  eight  or  ten  persons,  drawn  up 
on  the  opposite  sides,  with  a  blank  space  between.  On  the 
one  side  sat  the  bride,  a  high-colored,  buxom  young  girl,  se- 
rene and  erect  as  Britannia  on  the  halfpennies,  and  guarded 
by  two  stout  fellows,  masons  or  slaters  apparently,  in  theii 
working  dresses.  They  looked  hard  at  the  carpenter  and  me 
as  we  entered,  of  course  regarding  us  as  the  assailants  against 
whom  they  would  have  to  maintain  their  prize.  On  the  other 
side  sat  a  group  of  the  bride's  relatives, — among  the  rest  her 


OE,    TIIE   STOKY  OF   MY   EDUCATION.  409 

brother, — silent,  and  all  apparently  very  much  grieved ;  while 
in  the  space  between  them  there  stumped  up  and  down  a  lame, 
sallow-complexioned  oddity,  in  shabby  black,  who  seemed  to 
be  making  a  set  oration,  to  which  no  one  replied,  about  the 
sacred  claims  of  love,  and  the  cruelty  of  interfering  with  the 
affections  of  young  people.  Neither  the  carpenter  nor  myself 
felt  any  inclination  to  debate  with  the  orator,  or  fight  with  the 
guards,  or  yet  to  interfere  with  the  affections  of  the  young 
lady  ;  and  so,  calling  out  the  brother  into  another  room,  and 
expressing  our  regret  at  what  had  happened,  we  stated  our 
case,  and  found  him,  as  we  had  expected,  very  reasonable. 
We  could  not,  however,  treat  for  the  absent  bridegroom,  nor 
could  he  engage  for  his  sister ;  and  so  we  had  to  part  without 
coming  to  any  agreement.  There  were  points  about  the  case 
which  at  first  I  could  not  understand.  My  jilted  acquaintance 
the  cabinetmaker  had  not  only  enjoyed  the  countenance  of 
all  his  mistress's  relatives,  but  he  had  been  also  as  well  re- 
ceived by  herself  as  lovers  usually  are  :  she  had  written  him 
kind  letters,  and  accepted  of  his  presents ;  and  then,  just  as 
her  friends  were  sitting  down  to  the  marriage-breakfast,  she 
had  eloped  writh  another  man.  The  other  man,  however, — a 
handsome  fellow,  but  great  scamp, — had  a  prior  claim  to  her 
regards  :  he  had  been  the  lover  of  her  choice,  though  detested 
by  her  brother  and  all  her  friends,  who  were  sufficiently  well 
acquainted  with  his  character  to  know  that  he  would  land  her 
in  ruin  ;  and  during  his  absence  in  the  country,  where  he  was 
working  as  a  slater,  they  had  lent  their  influence  and  counte- 
nance to  my  acquaintance  the  cabinetmaker,  in  order  to  get 
her  married  to  a  comparatively  safe  man,  out  of  the  slater's 
reach.  And,  not  very  strong  of  will,  she  had  acquiesced  in  the 
arrangement.  On  the  eve  of  the  marriage,  however,  the  slater 
had  come  into  town ;  and,  exchanging  clothes  with  an  ac- 
quaintance, a  Highland  soldier,  he  had  walked  unsuspected 
opposite  her  door,  until,  finding  an  opportunity  of  conversing 
with  her  on  the  morning  of  the  wedding-day,  he  had  repre- 
sented her  new  lover  as  a  silly,  ill-shaped  fellow,  who  had  just 
head  enough  to  be  mercenary,  and  himself  as  one  of  the  most 


410  MY   SCHOOLS   AND   SCHOOLMASTERS; 

devoted  and  disconsolate  of  lovers.  And,  his  soft  tongue  and 
fine  leg  gaining  the  day,  she  had  left  the  marriage  guests  to 
enjoy  their  tea  and  toast  without  her,  and  set  off  with  him  to 
the  change-house.  Ultimately  the  aflair  ended  ill  for  all 
parties.  I  lost  my  job,  for  I  saw  no  more  of  the  bride's 
brother  ;  the  wrong-headed  cabinetmaker,  contrary  to  the  ad- 
vice of  his  mother  and  her  lodger,  entered  into  a  lawsuit,  in 
which  he  got  small  damages  and  much  vexation ;  and  tht 
slater  and  his  mistress  broke  out  into  such  a  course  of  dissi 
pation  after  becoming  man  and  wife,  that  they  and  the  five 
hundred  pounds  came  to  an  end  almost  together.  Shortly 
after,  my  landlady  and  her  son  quitted  the  country  for  the 
United  States.  So  favorably  had  the  poor  woman  impressed 
me  as  one  of  the  truly  excellent,  that  1  took  a  journey  from 
Cromarty  to  Inverness — a  distance  of  nineteen  miles — to  bid 
her  farewell ;  but  I  found,  on  my  arrival,  her  house  shut  up, 
and  learned  that  she  had  left  the  place  for  some  sailing  port 
on  the  west  coast  two  days  before.  She  was  a  humble  washer- 
woman ;  but  I  am  convinced  that  in  the  other  world,  which 
she  must  have  entered  long  ere  now,  she  ranks  considerably 
higher. 

I  waited  on  in  Inverness,  in  the  hope  that,  according  to 
Burns, "  my  brothers  of  the  earth  would  give  me  leave  to  toil ;" 
but  the  hope  was  a  vain  one,  as  I  succeeded  in  procuring  no 
second  job.  There  was  no  lack,  however,  of  the  sort  of  em- 
ployment which  I  could  cut  out  for  myself;  but  the  remunera- 
tion— only  now  in  the  process  of  being  realized,  and  that  very 
slowly — had  to  be  deferred  to  a  distant  day.  I  had  to  give 
more  than  twelve  years  credit  to  the  pursuits  that  engaged  me  ; 
and  as  my  capital  was  small,  it  was  rather  a  trying  matter  to 
be  "  kept  so  long  out  of  my  wages."  There  is  a  wonderful 
group  of  what  are  now  termed  osars,  in  the  immediate  neigh- 
borhood of  Inverness, — a  group  to  which  the  Queen  of  Scottish 
Tomhans,  the  picturesque Tomnahuirich,  belongs,  and  to  the  ex- 
amination of  which  I  devoted  several  days.  But  I  learned  only 
to  state  the  difficulty  which  they  form,  not  to  solve  it ;  and  now 
that  Agassiz  had  promulgated  his  glacial  theory,  and  that  traces 


OR,    THE    STORY   OF   MY   EDUCATION.  411 

of  the  great  iee  agencies  have  been  detected  all  over  Scotland, 
the  mystery  of  the  osars  remains  a  mystery  still.  I  succeed- 
ed, however,  in  determining  at  this  time,  that  they  belong  to 
a  later  period  than  the  boulder  clay,  which  I  found  underlying 
the  great  gravel  formation  of  which  they  form  a  part,  in  a  sec- 
tion near  Loch  Ness  that  had  been  laid  open  shortly  before, 
in  excavating  for  the  great  Caledonian  Canal.  And  as  all,  or 
almost  all,  the  shells  of  the  boulder  clay  are  of  species  that 
still  live,  we  may  infer  that  the  mysterious  osars  were  formed 
not  very  long  ere  the  introduction  upon  our  planet  of  the  in 
quisitive  little  creature  that  has  been  puzzling  himself — hith- 
erto at  least  wTith  no  satisfactory  result — in  attempting  to  ac- 
count for  their  origin.  I  examined,  too,  with  some  care,  the 
old-coast  line,  so  well  developed  in  this  neighborhood  as  to 
form  one  of  the  features  of  its  striking  scenery,  and  which 
must  be  regarded  as  the  geological  memorial  and  representative 
of  those  latter  ages  of  the  world  in  which  the  human  epoch  im- 
pinged on  the  old  Pre-Adamite  periods.  The  magistrates  of 
the  place  were  engaged  at  the  time  in  doing  their  duty,  like 
sensible  men,  as  they  were,  in  what  I  could  not  help  thinking 
a  somewhat  barbarous  instance.  The  neat,  well-proportioned, 
/ery  uninteresting  jail-spire  of  the  burgh,  about  which,  in  its 
integrity,  no  one  cares  anything,  had  been  shaken  by  an  earth- 
quake, which  took  place  in  the  year  1816,  into  one  of  the  great- 
est curiosities  in  the  kingdom.  The  earthquake,  which,  for  a 
Scotch  one,  had  been  unprecedentedly  severe,  especially  in  the 
line  of  the  great  Caledonian  Valley,  had,  by  a  strange  vorticose 
motion,  twisted  round  the  spire,  so  that,  at  the  transverse  line 
of  displacement,  the  panes  and  corners  of  the  octagonal  broach 
which  its  top  formed,  overshot  their  proper  positions  fully 
seven  inches.  The  corners  were  carried  into  nearly  the  middle 
of  the  panes,  as  if  some  gigantic  hand,  in  attempting  to  twirl 
round  the  building  by  the  spire,  as  one  twirls  round  a  spin- 
ning-top by  the  stalk  or  bole,  had,  from  some  failure  in  the 
coheroicy  of  the  masonry,  succeeded  in  turning  round  only 
the  part  of  which  he  had  laid  hold.  Sir  Charles  Lyell  figures, 
in  his  "  Print  ;ples,"  similar  shifts  in  the  stones  of  two  obelisks 


412  MY   SCHOOLS   AND   SCHOOLMASTERS; 

in  a  Calabrian  convent,  and  subjoins  the  ingenious  suggestion 
on  the  subject  of  Messrs.  Darwin  and  Mallet.  And  here  was 
there  a  Scotch  example  of  the  same  sort  of  ingenious  pheno- 
mena, not  less  curious  than  the  Calabrian  one  and  certainly 
unique  in  its  character  as  Scotch,  which,  though  the  injured 
building  had  already  stood  twelve  years  in  its  displaced  con- 
dition, and  might  stand  for  as  many  more  as  the  hanging 
tower  of  Piisa,  the  magistrates  were  laboriously  effacing  at  the 
expense  of  the  burgh.  They  were  completely  successful,  Uaj  ; 
and  the  jail-spire  was  duly  restored  to  its  state  of  original  in- 
significance, as  a  fifth-rate  piece  of  ornamental  masonry.  But 
how  very  absurd,  save,  mayhap,  here  and  there  to  a  geolo- 
gist, must  not  these  remarks  appear  ! 

But  my  criticisms  on  the  magistracy,  however  foolish,  were 
silent  criticisms,  and  did  harm  to  no  one.  About  the  time, 
however,  in  which  I  was  indulging  in  them,  I  imprudently  ex- 
posed myself,  by  one  of  those  impulsive  acts  of  which  men  re- 
pent at  their  leisure,  to  criticisms  not  silent,  and  of  a  kind  that 
occasionally  do  harm.  I  had  been  piqued  by  the  rejection  of 
my  verses  on  the  Ness.  True,  I  had  no  high  opinion  of  their 
merit, — deeming  them  little  more  than  equal  to  the  average 
verses  of  provincial  prints;  but  then  I  had  intimated  my  scheme 
of  getting  them  printed  to  a  few  Cromarty  friends,  and  was 
now  weak  enough  to  be  annoyed  at  the  thought  that  my  towns- 
folk would  regard  me  as  an  incompetent  blockhead,  who  could 
not  write  rhymes  good  enough  for  a  newspaper.  And  so  I 
rashly  determined  on  appealing  to  the  public  in  a  small  vol- 
ume. Had  I  known  as  much  as  in  an  after-period  about 
newspaper  affairs,  and  the  mode  in  which  copies  of  verses  are 
often  dealt  writh  by  editors  and  their  assistants, — fatigued  with 
nonsense,  and  at  once  hopeless  of  finding  grain  in  the  enor- 
mous heaps  of  chaff  submitted  to  them,  and  too  much  occu- 
pied tc  seek  for  it,  even  should  they  believe  in  its  occurrence 
in  the  form  of  single  seeds  sparsely  scattered, — I  would  have 
thought  less  of  the  matter.  As  the  case  was,  however,  I  hasti 
ly  collected  from  among  my  piles  of  manuscripts  some  fifteen 
or  twenty  pieces  in  verse,  written  chiefly  during  the  preceding 


On,   THE   STOnY   OF   MY   EDUCATION.  413 

six  years,  and  put  them  into  the  hands  of  the  printer  of  the 
Inverness  Courier.  It  would  have  been  a  greatly  wiser  act, 
as  I  soon  came  to  see,  had  I  put  them  into  the  fire  instead  ; 
but  my  choice  of  a  printing  office  secured  to  me  at  least  one  ad- 
vantage,— it  brought  me  acquainted  with  one  of  the  ablest  and 
most  accomplished  of  Scottish  editors, — the  gentleman  who 
now  owns  and  still  conducts  the  Courier  ;  and,  besides,  having 
once  crossed  the  Rubicon,  I  felt  all  my  native  obstinacy  stirred 
up  to  make  good  a  position  for  myself,  despite  of  failure  and 
reverses  on  the  further  side.  It  is  an  advantage  in  some  cases 
to  be  committed.  The  clear  large  type  of  the  Courier  office 
did,  however,  show  me  many  a  blemish  in  my  verse  that  had 
escaped  me  before,  and  broke  off*  associations  which — curious- 
ly linked  with  the  manuscripts — had  given  to  the  stanzas  and 
passages  which  they  contained  charms  of  tone  and  color  not 
their  own.  I  began  to  find,  too,  that  my  humble  accomplish- 
ment of  verse  was  too  narrow  to  contain  my  thinking ; — the 
thinking  ability  had  been  growing,  but  not  the  ability  of  po- 
etic expression;  nay,  much  of  the  thinking  seemed  to  be  of  a 
kind  not  suited  for  poetic  purposes  at  all ;— rand  though  it  was 
of  course  far  better  that  I  should  come  to  know  this  in  time, 
than  that,  like  some,  even  superior  men,  I  should  persist  in 
wasting,  in  inefficient  verse,  the  hours  in  which  vigorous  prose 
might  be  produced,  it  was  at  least  quite  mortifying  enough  to 
make  the  discovery  with  half  a  volume  of  metre  committed 
to  type,  and  in  the  hands  of  the  printer.  Resolving,  however, 
that  my  humble  name  should  not  appear  in  the  title  page,  I 
went  on  with  my  volume.  My  new  friend  the  editor  kindly 
inserted,  from  time  to  time,  copies  of  its  verses  in  the  columns 
of  his  paper,  and  strove  to  excite  some  degree  of  interest  and 
expectation  regarding  it ;  but  my  recent  discovery  had  thor- 
oughly sobered  me,  and  I  awaited  the  publication  of  my  vol- 
ume not  much  elated  by  the  honor  done  me,  and  as  little  san- 
guine respecting  its  ultimate  success  as  well  might  be.  And 
ere  I  quitted  Inverness,  a  sad  bereavement,  which  greatly  nar- 
rowed the  circle  of  my  best-loved  friends,  threw  very  much 
into  the  back-ground  all  my  thoughts  regarding  it. 


414  MY  SCHOOLS  AND  SCHOOLMASTERS; 

On  quitting  Cromarty,  I  had  left  my  uncle  James  laboring 
under  an  attack  of  rheumatic  fever ;  but  though  he  had  just 
entered  his  grand  climacteric,  he  was  still  a  vigorous  and  ac- 
tive man,  and  I  could  not  doubt  that  he  had  strength  of  con- 
stitution enough  to  throw  it  off.  He  had  failed  to  rally,  how- 
ever ;  and  after  reti  rning  one  evening  from  a  long  exploratory 
walk,  I  found  in  my  lodgings  a  note  awaiting  me,  intimating 
his  death.  The  blow  fell  with  stunning  effect.  Ever  since 
the  death  of  my  father,  my  two  uncles  had  faithfully  occupied 
his  place ;  and  James,  of  a  franker  and  less  reserved  temper 
than  Alexander,  and  more  tolerant  of  my  boyish  follies,  had, 
though  I  sincerely  loved  the  other,  laid  stronger  hold  of  my 
affections.  He  was  of  a  genial  disposition,  too,  that  always  re- 
mained sanguine  in  the  cast  of  its  hopes  and  anticipations ;  and 
he  had  unwittingly  flattered  my  vanity  by  taking  me  pretty 
much  at  my  own  estimate, — overweeningly  high,  of  course,  like 
that  of  almost  all  young  men,  but  mayhap  necessary,  in  the 
character  of  a  force,  to  make  headway  in  the  face  of  obstruc- 
tion and  difficulty.  Uncle  James,  like  Le  Balafre  in  the  novel, 
wrould  have  "  ventured  his  nephew  against  the  wight  Wallace." 
I  immediately  set  out  for  Cromarty  ;  and,  curious  as  it  may 
seem,  found  grief  so  companionable,  that  the  four  hours  which 
I  spent  by  the  way  seemed  hardly  equal  to  one.  I  retained, 
however,  only  a  confused  recollection  of  my  journey,  remem- 
bering little  more  than  that,  when  passing  at  midnight  along 
the  dreary  Maollbuie,  I  saw  the  moon  in  her  wane,  rising  red 
and  lightless  out  of  the  distant  sea ;  and  that,  lying,  as  it  were, 
prostrate  on  the  horizon,  she  reminded  me  of  some  o'ermatch- 
ed  wrestler  thrc  vvn  helplessly  on  the  ground. 

On  reaching  home,  I  found  my  mother,  late  as  the  hour  was, 
still  up,  and  engaged  in  making  a  dead-dress  for  the  body. 
r*  There  is  a  letter  from  the  south,  with  a  black  seal,  awaiting 
you,"  she  said ;  "  I  fear  you  have  also  lost  your  friend  Wil- 
liam Ross."  I  opened  the  letter,  and  found  her  surmise  too 
well  founded.  It  was  a  farewell  letter,  written  in  feeble  char- 
acters, but  in  no  feeble  spirit ;  and  a  brief  postscript,  added 
by  a  ccmrade,  intimated  the  death  of  the  writer.     "This" 


115 

wrote  the  dying  man,  with  a  hand  fast  forgetting  its  cunning, 
"  is,  to  all  human  probability,  my  last  letter ;  but  the  thought 
gives  me  little  trouble  ;  for  my  hope  of  salvation  is  in  the 
blood  of  Jesus.  Farewell,  my  sincerest  friend !"  There  is  a 
provision  through  which  nature  sets  limits  to  both  physical  and 
mental  suffering.  A  man  partially  stunned  by  a  violent  blow 
is  sometimes  conscious  that  it  is  followed  by  other  blows, 
rather  from  seeing  than  from  feeling  them :  his  capacity  of 
suffering  has  been  exhausted  by  the  first ;  and  the  others  that 
fall  upon  him,  though  they  may  injure,  flail  to  pain.  And  so 
also  it  is  with  strokes  that  fall  on  the  affections.  In  other  cir- 
cumstances I  would  have  grieved  for  the  death  of  my  friend, 
but  my  mind  was  already  occupied  to  the  full  by  the  death  of 
my  uncle;  and  though  I  saw  the  new  stroke,  several  days 
elapsed  ere  I  could  feel  it.  My  friend,  after  half  a  lifetime  of 
decline,  had  sunk  suddenly.  A  comrade  who  lived  with  him 
— a  stout,  florid  lad — had  been  seized  by  the  same  insidious 
malady  as  his  own,  about  a  twelvemonth  before ;  and,  pre- 
viously unacquainted  with  sickness,  in  him  the  progress  of  the 
disease  had  been  rapid,  and  his  sufferings  were  so  great,  that 
he  was  incapacitated  for  work  several  months  before  his  death. 
But  my  poor  friend,  though  sinking  at  the  time,  wrought  for 
both  :  he  was  able  to  prosecute  his  employments, — which,  ac- 
cording to  Bacon,  "  required  rather  the  finger  than  the  arm," — 
in  even  the  latter  stages  of  his  complaint ;  and  after  support- 
ing and  tending  his  dying  comrade  till  he  sank,  he  himself 
suddenly  broke  down  and  died.  And  thus  perished,  unknown 
and  in  the  prime  of  his  days,  a  man  of  sterling  principle  and 
fine  genius.  I  found  employment  enough  for  the  few  weeks 
which  still  remained  of  the  working  season  of  this  year,  in 
hewing  a  tombstone  for  my  Uncle  James,  on  which  I  inscrib- 
ed an  epitaph  of  a  few  lines,  that  had  the  merit  of  being  true. 
It  characterized  the  deceased — "  James  Wright" — as  "  an  hon- 
est, warm-hearted  man,  who  had  the  happiness  of  living  with- 
out reproach,  and  of  dying  without  fear." 


416  MY  SCHOOLS  AND   SCHOOLMASTERS; 


CHAPTER  XX. 


M  This  while  my  notion's  ta'en  a  sklent, 
To  try  my  fate  in  guid  black  prent ; 
But  still  the  mair  I'm  that  way  bent, 

Something  cries,  Hoolie ! 
I  red  you,  honest  man,  tak'  tent ; 
Ye'll  shaw  your  folly." 

Burns. 

Mr  vol  ime  of  verse  passed  but  slowly  through  the  press ; 
and  as  I  had  begun  to  look  rather  ruefully  forward  to  its 
appearance,  there  was  no  anxiety  evinced  on  my  part  to 
urge  it  on.  At  length,  however,  all  the  pieces  were  thrown 
into  type ;  and  I  followed  them  up  by  a  tail-piece  in  prose, 
formed  somewhat  on  the  model  of  the  preface  of  Pope, — for 
I  was  a  great  admirer  at  the  time  of  the  English  written  by 
the  "  wits  of  the  reign  of  Queen  Anne," — in  which  I  gave 
serious  expression  to  the  suspicion  that,  as  a  writer  of  verse, 
I  had  mistaken  my  vocation. 

M  It  is  more  than  possible,"  I  said,  "  that  I  have  completely  failed  in  poetry. 
It  may  appear  that,  while  grasping  at  originalily  of  description  and  sefjiiment 
aud  striving  to  attain  propriety  of  expression,  I  have  only  been  depicting  com- 
mon images,  and  embodying  obvious  thoughts,  and  this,  too,  in  inelegant  lan- 
guage. Yet  even  in  this  case,  though  dsappoinled,  I  shall  not  be  without  my 
sources  of  comfort.  The  pleasure  which  I  enjoy  in  composing  verses  is  quite 
inlependent  of  other  men's  opinions  of  them  ;  and  I  expect  to  feel  as  happy  as 
ever  in  this  amusement,  even  though  assured  that  others  could  find  no  pleas- 
ure in  reading  what  I  had  found  so  much  in  writing.  It  is  no  small  solace  to 
reflect,  that  the  fable  of  the  dog  and  shadow  cannot  apply  to  me,  since  my  pre- 


MY   EDUCATION.  417 

dueelion  for  poetry  has  not  prevented  me  from  acquiring  the  skiM  of  at  least  the 
common  mechanic.  I  am  not  more  ignorant  of  masonry  and  architecture  than 
many  professors  of  these  arts  who  never  measured  a  stanza.  There  is  also  some 
satisfaction  in  reflecting  that,  unlike  some  would-be  satirists,  I  have  not  assail- 
ed private  character,  and  .hat  though  men  may  deride  me  as  an  unskilful  poet, 
they  cannot  justly  detest  me  as  a  bad  or  ill-natured  man.  Nay,  I  shall  possibly 
have  the  pleasure  of  repaying  those  who  may  be  merry  at  my  expense,  in  their 
own  coin.  An  ill-conditioned  critic  is  always  a  more  pitiable  sort  of  person  than 
an  unsuccessful  versifier;  and  the  desire  of  showing  one's  own  discernment  at  the 
expense  of  one's  neighbor,  a  greatly  worse  thing  than  the  simple  wish,  however 
divorced  from  the  ability,  of  affording  him  harmless  pleasure.  Further,  it  would 
think,  not  be  difficult  to  show  that  my  mistake  in  supposing  myself  to  be  a 
poel  is  not  a  whit  more  ridiculous,  and  infinitely  less  mischievous,  than  many 
of  those  into  which  myriads  of  my  fellow-men  are  falling  every  day.  I  have 
seen  the  vicious  att>  mpting  to  teach  morals,  and  the  weak  to  unfold  mysteries. 
I  have  seen  men  set  up  for  freethinkers  who  were  born  not  to  think  at  all.  To 
concuide,  there  will  surely  be  cause  for  selt-gratulation  in  reflecting  that,  by  be- 
coming an  author,  I  have  only  lost  a  few  pounds,  not  sained  the  reputation  of 
being  s  mean  fellow,  who  had  teased  all  his  acquaintance  until  they  had  sub- 
scribed ior  a  worthless  book;  and  that  the  severest  remark  of  the  severest  critic 
can  only  be,  'a  certain  anonymous  rhymer  is  no  poet.'" 


As,  notwithstanding  the  blank  in  the  title  page,  the  au- 
thorship of  my  volume  would  be  known  in  Cromarty  and 
its  neighborhood,  I  set  myself  to  see  whether  I  could  not, 
meanwhile,  prepare  for  the  press  something  better  suited 
to  make  an  impression  in  my  favor.  In  tossing  the  bar 
or  throwing  the  stone,  the  competitor  who  begins  with  a 
rather  indifferent  cast  is  never  very  unfavorably  judged  if 
he  immediately  mend  it  by  giving  a  better ;  and  I  resolv- 
ed on  mending  my  cast,  if  I  could,  by  writing  for  the  In- 
verness Courier — which  was  now  open  to  me,  through  the 
kindness  of  the  editor — a  series  of  carefully  prepared  let- 
ters on  some  popular  subject.  In  the  days  of  Goldsmith, 
the  herring-fishing  employed,  as  he  tells  us  in  one  of  his 
essays,  "all  Grub  Street."  In  the  north  of  Scotland  this 
fishery  was  a  popular  theme  little  more  than  twenty  years 
ago.  The  welfare  of  whole  communities  depended  in  no 
slight  degree  on  its  success  :  it  formed  the  basis  of  mar.y  a 
calculation,  and  the  subject  of  many  an  investment ;  and  it 
was  all  the  more  suitable  for  mv  nurpose  from  the  circum- 


418  MY   SCHOOLS  AND   SCHOOLMASTERS; 

stance  that  there  was  no  Grub  Street  in  that  part  of  tho 
world  to  employ  itself  about.  It  was,  in  at  least  all  its 
better  aspects,  a  fresh  subject;  and  I  deemed  myself  more 
thoroughly  acquainted  with  it  than  at  least  most  of  the 
men  who  were  skilful  enough,  as  litterateurs,  to  communi- 
cate their  knowledge  in  writing.  I  knew  the  peculiarities 
of  fishermen  as  a  class,  and  the  effects  of  this  special 
branch  of  their  profession  on  their  character  :  I  had  seen 
them  pursuing  their  employments  amid  the  sublime  of  na- 
ture, and  had  occasionally  taken  a  share  in  their  work  ;  and, 
further,  I  was  acquainted  with  not  a  few  antique  traditions 
of  the  fishermen  of  other  ages,  in  which,  as  in  the  narra- 
tives of  most  seafaring  men,  there  mingled  with  a  certain 
amount  of  real  incident,  curious  snatches  of  the  supernatu 
ral.  In  short,  the  subject  was  one  on  which,  as  I  knew  a 
good  deal  regarding  it  that  was  not  generally  known,  I  was 
in  some  degree  qualified  to  write;  and  so  I  occupied  my 
leisure  in  casting  my  facts  respecting  it  into  a  series  of  let- 
ters, of  which  the  first  appeared  in  the  Courier  a  fortnight 
after  my  volume  of  verse  was  laid  on  the  tables  of  the  north- 
country  booksellers. 

I  had  first  gone  out  to  sea  to  assist  in  catching  herrings 
about  ten  years  before ;  and  I  now  described,  in  one  of  my 
letters,  as  truthfully  as  I  could,  those  features  of  the  scene 
to  which  I  had  been  introduced  on  that  occasion,  which  had 
struck  me  as  novel  and  peculiar.  And  what  had  been 
strange  to  me  proved  equally  so,  I  found,  to  the  readers 
of  the  Courier.  My  letters  attracted  attention,  and  were 
republished  in  my  behalf  by  the  proprietors  of  the  paper, 
"  in  consequence,"  said  my  friend  the  editor,  in  a  note  which 
he  kindly  attached  to  the  pamphlet  which  they  formed 
"  of  the  interest  they  had  excited  in  the  northern  counties.' 
Their  modicum  of  success,  lowly  as  was  their  subject,  com 
pared  with  that  of  some  of  my  more  ambitious  verses, 
taught  me  my  proper  course.  Let  it  be  my  business,  I 
said,  to  know  what  is  not  generally  known ; — let  me  qual- 
ify myself  to  stand  as  an  interpreter  between  nature  and  the 


419 

public :  while  I  strive  to  narrate  as  pleasingly,  and  describe 
as  vividly,  as  I  can,  let  truth,  not  fiction,  be  my  walk  ; 
and  if  I  succeed  in  uniting  the  novel  to  the  true,  in  prov- 
inces of  more  general  interest  than  the  very  humble  one 
in  which  I  have  now  partially  succeeded,  I  shall  succeed 
also  in  establishing  myself  in  a  position  which,  if  not  lofty, 
will  yield  me  at  least  more  solid  footing  than  that  to  which 
I  might  attain  as  a  mere  litterateur,  who,  mayhap,  pleased 
for  a  little,  but  added  nothing  to  the  general  fund.  The 
resolution  was,  I  think,  a  good  one ; — would  that  it  had 
been  better  kept !  The  following  extracts  may  serve  to 
show  that,  humble  as  my  new  subject  may  be  deemed,  it 
gave  considerable  scope  for  description  of  a  kind  not  often 
associated  with  herrings,  even  when  they  employed  all  Grub 
Street : — 

"  As  the  night  gradually  darkened,  the  sky  assumed  a  dead  and  leaden  hue ;  the 
sea,  roughened  by  the  rising  breeze,  reflected  its  deeper  hues  with  an  intensity  ap- 
proaching to  black,  and  seemed  a  dark  uneven  pavement,  that  absorbed  every 
ray  of  the  remaining  light.  A  calm  silvery  patch,  some  fifteen  or  twenty  yards 
in  extent,  came  moving  slowly  through  the  black.  It  seemed  merely  a  patch  of 
water  coated  with  oil ;  but,  obedient  to  some  other  moving  power  than  that  of 
either  tide  or  wind,  it  sailed  aslant  our  line  of  buoys,  a  stone-cast  from  our  bows, — 
lengthened  itself  along  the  line  to  thrice  its  former  extent, — paused  as  if  for  a 
moment, — and  then  three  of  the  buoys,  after  erecting  themselves  on  their  nar- 
rower base,  with  a  sudden  jerk,  slowly  sank.  'One — two — three  buoys!'  ex- 
claimed one  of  the  fishermen,  reckoning  them  as  they  disappeared ; — there  are  ten 
barrels  for  us  secure.'  A  few  moments  were  suffered  to  elapse;  and  then,  unfix- 
ing the  haulser  from  the  stem,  and  bringing  it  aft  to  the  stern,  we  commenced 
hauling.  The  nets  approached  the  gunwale.  The  first  three  appeared,  from  the 
phosphoric  light  of  the  water,  as  if  bursting  into  flames  of  a  pale  green  color. 
Mere  and  there  a  herring  glittered  bright  in  the  meshes,  or  went  darting  away 
through  the  pitchy  darkness,  visible  for  a  moment  by  its  own  light.  The  fourth 
net  was  brighter  than  any  of  the  others,  and  glittered  through  the  waves  while  it 
was  yel  several  fathoms  away ;  the  pale  green  seemed  as  if  mingled  with  broken 
Mieets  of  snow,  that — flickering  amid  the  mass  of  light— appeared,  with  every  tug 
(riven  by  the  fishermen,  to  shift,  dissipate,  and  again  form  ;  and  there  streamed 
from  it  into  the  surrounding  gloom  myriads  of  green  rays,  an  instant  seen  and  then 
lost,— the  retreating  fish  that  had  avoided  the  meshes,  but  had  lingered,  until  dis- 
turbed, beside  their  entangled  companions.  It  contained  a  considerable  body  of 
herrings.  As  we  raised  them  over  the  gunwale,  they  felt  warm  to  the  hand,  for  in 
'he  middle  of  a  large  shoal  »ven  the  temperature  of  the  water  is  raised,— a  fact 
well  known  to  every  herring  fisherman;  and  in  shaking  them  out  of  the  meshes, 
19 


420  MY  SCHOOLS  AND  SCHOOLMASTERS  ; 

the  ear  became  sensible  of  a  shrill,  chirping  sound,  like  that  of  tie  mouse,  but 
much  fainter,— a  ceaseless  cheep,  cheep,  cheep,  occasioned  apparently-  for  no  true 
fish  is  furnished  with  organs  of  sound — by  a  sudden  escape  '"■or"  the  air-bladder. 
The  shoal,  a  small  one,  had  spread  over  only  three  of  the  nets,— the  three  whose 
buoys  had  so  suddenly  disappeared  ;  and  most  of  the  others  had  but  their  mere 
sprinkling  of  fish,  some  dozen  or  two  in  a  net;  but  so  thickly  had  they  lain  in 
the  fortunate  three,  that  the  entire  haul  consisted  of  rather  more  than  twelve 
barrels. 

»Ve  started  up  about  midnight,  and  saw  an  open  sea,  as  before;  but  the  seen?  had 
considerably  changed  since  we  had  lain  down.  The  breeze  had  died  into  a  calm; 
the  heavens,  no  longer  dark  and  gray,  were  glowing  with  stars;  and  the  sea,  from 
the  smoothness  of  the  surface,  appeared  a  second  sky,  as  bright  and  starry  as  the 
other;  with  this  difference,  however,  that  all  its  stars  seemed  to  be  comets:  the 
slightly  tremulous  motion  of  the  surface  elongated  the  reflected  images,  and  gave 
to  each  its  tail.  There  was  no  visible  line  of  division  at  the  horizon.  Where  the 
bills  rose  high  along  the  coast,  and  appeared  as  if  doubled  by  their  undulating  strip 
of  shadow,  what  might  be  deemed  a  dense  bank  of  cloud  lay  sleeping  in  the  heav- 
ens, just  where  the  upper  and  nether  firmaments  met;  but  its  presence  rendered 
the  illusion  none  the  less  complete:  the  outline  of  the  boat  lay  dark  around  U9, 
like  the  fragment  of  some  broken  planet  susj /ended  in  middle  space,  far  from  the 
earth  and  every  star;  and  all  around  we  saw  extended  the  complete  sphere, — un- 
hidden above  from  Orion  to  the  Pole,  and  visible  beneath  from  the  Pole  to  Orion. 
Certainly  sublime  scenery  possesses  in  itself  no  virtue  potent  enough  to  develop 
the  faculties,  or  the  mind  of  the  fisherman  would  not  have  so  long  lain  asleep. 
There  is  no  profession  whose  recollections  should  rise  into  purer  poetry  than  his; 
but  if  the  mirror  bear  not  its  previous  amalgam  of  taste  and  genius,  what  does  it 
matter  though  the  scene  which  sheds  upon  it  its  many-colored  light  should  be  rich 
in  grandeur  and  beauty?  There  is  no  corresponding  image  produced:  the  sus- 
ceptibility of  reflecting  the  landscape  is  never  imparted  by  the  landscape  itself, 
whether  to  the  mind  or  to  the  glass.  There  is  no  class  of  recollections  more  illu- 
sory than  those  which  associate — as  if  they  existed  in  the  relation  of  cause  and  effect 
— some  piece  of  striking  scenery  with  some  sudden  development  of  the  intellect  or 
imagination.  The  eyes  open,  and  there  is  an  external  beauty  seen  ;  but  it  is  not  the 
external  beauty  that  has  opened  the  es  es. 

****** 

"It  was  still  a  dead  calm,— calm  to  blackness;  when,  in  about  an  hour  afler 
sunrise,  what  seemed  like  fitful  airs  began  to  play  on  the  surface,  imparting  to  it, 
in  irregular  patches,  a  tint  of  gray.  First  one  patch  would  form,  then  a  second 
beside  it,  then  a  third,  and  then  for  miles  around,  the  surface,  ehe  so  silvery,  would 
seem  frosted  over  with  gray  :  the  apparent  breeze  appeared  as  if  propagating  i  self 
from  one  central  point.  In  a  few  seconds  after,  all  would  be  calm  as  at  first ;  and 
then  from  some  other  centre  the  patches  of  gray  would  again  form  and  widen,  till 
the  whole  Frith  seemed  covered  by  Lhem.  A  peculiar  poppling  noise,  as  if  a  thun- 
der-shower was  beating  the  surface  with  its  multitudinous  drops,  rose  around  our 
boat;  the  water  seemed  sprinkled  with  an  infinity  of  points  of  si  Ivor,  that  lor  an 
instant  glittered  to  the  sun,  and  then  resigned  their  places  to  other  -juick  glancing 


421 

points,  mat  in  turn  were  succeeded  by  others.  The  herrings  by  millions,  and 
thousands  of  millions,  were  at  play  around  us,  leaping  a  few  inches  into  the  air, 
and  then  falling  and  disappearing,  to  rise  and  leap  again.  Shoal  rose  beyond  shoal, 
till  the  whole  bank  of  Gulliam  seemed  beaten  into  foam,  and  the  low  poppling 
sounds  were  multiplied  into  a  roar,  like  that  of  the  wind  through  some  tall  wood, 
that  might  be  heard  in  the  calm  for  miles.  And  again,  the  shoals  extending  around 
ns  seemed  to  cover,  for  hundreds  of  square  miles,  the  vast  Moray  Frith.  But  though 
they  played  beside  our  buoys  by  thousands,  not  a  herring  swam  so  low  as  the 
upper  baulk  of  our  drift.  One  of  the  fishermen  took  up  a  stone,  and,  flinging  it 
right  over  our  second  buoy  into  the  middle  of  the  shoal,  the  fish  disappeared  frorc 
the  surface  for  several  fathoms  around.  '  Ah,  there  they  go,'  he  exclaimed, — '  if 
they  go  but  low  enough.  Four  years  ago  I  startled  thirty  barrels  of  light  fish  into 
my  drift  just  by  throwing  a  stone  among  them.'  I  know  not  what  effect  the  stone 
might  have  had  on  this  occasion;  but  on  hauling  our  nets  for  the  third  and  last 
time,  we  found  we  had  captured  about  eight  barrels  offish  ;  and  then  hoisting  sail, — 
for  a  light  breeze  from  the  east  had  sprung  up,— we  made  for  the  shore  with  a  cargo 
of  twenty  barrels." 

Meanwhile  the  newspaper  critics  of  the  south  were  giving 
expression  to  all  sorts  of  judgments  on  my  verses.  It  was 
intimated  in  the  title  of  the  volume  that  they  had  been 
"  written  in  the  leisure  hours  of  a  journeyman  mason  ;"  and 
the  intimation  seemed  to  furnish  most  of  my  reviewers  with 
the  proper  cue  for  dealing  with  them.  "  The  time  has  gone 
by,"  said  one,  "when  a  literary  mechanic  used  to  be  re- 
garded as  a  phenomenon :  were  a  second  Burns  to  spring 
up  now,  he  wTould  not  be  entitled  to  so  much  praise  as  the 
first."  "It  is  our  duty  to  tell  this  writer,"  said  another, 
"  that  he  will  make  more  in  a  week  by  his  trowel  than  in 
half  a  century  by  his  pen."  "  We  are  glad  to  understand," 
said  a  third, — very  judiciously,  however, — "  that  our  author 
has  the  good  sense  to  rely  more  on  his  chisel  than  on  the 
Muses."  The  lessons  taught  me  were  of  a  sufficiently  va- 
ried, but,  on  the  whole,  rather  contradictory  character.  By 
one  writer  I  was  told  that  I  was  a  dull,  correct  fellow,  who 
had  written  a  book  in  which  there  was  nothing  amusing  and 
nothing  absurd.  Another,  however,  cheered  my  forlorn 
spirits  by  assuring  me  that  I  was  a  "  man  of  genius,  whose 
poems,  with  much  that  was  faulty,  contained  also  much  that 
was  interesting."  A  third  was  sure  I  had  "  no  chance  what- 
ever of  bong  known  beyond  the  limits  of  my  native  place," 


422 

and  that  my  "book  exhibited  none,  or  next  to  none,  of 
those  indications  which  sanction  the  expectation  of  better 
things  to  come ;"  while  a  fourth,  of  a  more  sanguine  vein, 
found  in  my  work  the  evidence  of  "  gifts  of  Nature,  which 
the  stimulus  of  encouragement,  and  the  tempering  lights 
of  experience,  might  hereafter  develop,  and  direct  to  the 
achievement  of  something  truly  wonderful."  There  were 
two  names  in  particular  that  my  little  volume  used  to  sug- 
gest to  the  newspaper  reviewers:  the  Tam  o'Shanter  and 
Souter  Johnnie  of  the  ingenious  Thorn  were  in  course  of 
being  exhibited  at  the  time;  and  it  was  known  that  Thorn 
had  wrought  as  a  journeyman  mason  :  and  there  was  a  rather 
slim  poet  called  Sillery,  the  author  of  several  forgotten  vol- 
umes of  verse,  one  of  which  had  issued  from  the  press  con- 
temporaneously with  mine,  who,  as  he  had  a  little  money, 
and  was  said  to  treat  his  literary  friends  very  luxuriously, 
was  praised  beyond  measure  by  the  newspaper  critics,  es- 
pecially by  those  of  the  Scottish  capital.  And  Thom  as  a 
mason,  and  Sillery  as  a  poet,  were  placed  repeatedly  before 
me.  One  critic,  who  was  sure  I  would  never  come  to  any- 
thing, magnanimously  remarked,  however,  that  as  he  bore 
me  no  ill  will,  he  would  be  glad  to  find  himself  mistak- 
en ;  nay,  that  it  would  give  him  "  unfeigned  pleasure  to 
learn  I  had  attained  to  the  well-merited  fame  of  even  Mr. 
Thom  himself."  And  another,  after  deprecating  the  un- 
due severity  so  often  shown  by  the  bred  writer  to  the 
working  man,  and  asserting  that  the  "journeyman  mason" 
was  in  this  instance,  notwithstanding  his  treatment,  a  man 
of  fair  parts,  ended  by  remarking,  that  it  was  of  course  not 
even  every  man  of  merit  who  could  expect  to  attain  to  the 
"high  poetic  eminence  and  celebrity  of  a  Charles  Do^le 
Sillery." 

All  this,  however,  was  criticism  at  a  distance,  and  dis- 
turbed me  but  little  when  engaged  in  toiling  in  the  church- 
yard, or  in  enjoying  my  quiet  evening  walks.  But  it  became 
more  formidable  when,  on  one  occasion,  it  came  to  beard  me 
in  my  den. 


OR,    THE   STORY   OF   MY   EDUCATION.  423 

The  place  was  visited  by  an  intinerant  lecturer  on  elocu 
tion, — one  Walsh,  who,  as  his  art  was  not  in  great  request 
among  the  quiet  ladies  and  busy  gentlemen  of  Cromarty, 
failed  to  draw  houses ;  till  at  length  there  appeared  one 
morning,  placarded  on  post  and  pillar,  an  intimation  to 
the  effect,  that  Mr.  Walsh  would  that  evening  deliver  an 
elaborate  criticism  on  the  lately-published  volume  of 
"  Poems  written  in  the  leisure  hours  of  a  Journeyman  Ma- 
son," and  select  from  it  a  portion  of  his  evening  readings 
The  intimation  drew  a  good  house ;  and,  curious  to  know 
what  was  awaiting  me,  I  paid  my  shilling  with  the  others, 
and  got  into  a  corner.  First  in  the  entertainment  there 
came  a  wearisome  dissertation  on  harmonic  inflections,  dou- 
ble emphasis,  the  echoing  words,  and  the  monotones.  But, 
to  borrow  from  Meg  Docls,  "  Oh,  what  a  style  of  language  !" 
The  elocutionist,  evidently  an  untaught  and  grossly  igno- 
rant man,  had  not  an  idea  of  composition.  Syntax,  gram- 
mar, and  good  sense,  were  set  at  nought  in  every  sentence ; 
but  then,  on  the  other  hand,  the  inflections  were  carefully 
maintained,  and  went  rising  and  falling  over  the  nonsense 
beneath,  like  the  waves  of  some  shallow  bay  over  a  bot- 
tom of  mud  and  comminuted  sea-weed.  After  the  disser- 
tation, we  were  gratified  by  a  few  recitations.  "  Lord  Ul- 
lin's  Daughter,"  the  "Razor  Seller,"  and  "My  Name  is 
Norval,"  were  given  in  great  force.  And  then  came  the 
critique.  "  Ladies  and  gentlemen,"  said  the  reviewer,  "  We 
cannot  expect  much  from  a  journeyman  mason  in  the  poetry 
line.  Right  poetry  needs  teaching.  No  man  can  be  a 
proper  poet  unless  he  be  an  elocutionist ;  for,  unless  he  be 
an  elocutionist,  how  can  he  make  his  verses  emphatic  in 
the  right  places,  or  manage  the  harmonic  inflexes,  or  deal 
with  the  rhetorical  pauses'?  And  now,,  Ladies  and  Gentle- 
men, I'll  show  you,  from  various  passages  in  this  book,  that 
the  untaught  journeyman  mason  who  made  it  never  took 
lessons  in  elocution.  I'll  first  read  you  a  passage  from  a 
piece  of  verse  called  the  'Death  of  Gardiner,' — the  person 
meant  being  the  late  Colonel  Gardiner,  I  suppose.     The  be- 


424  MY  SCHOOLS  AND  SCHOOLMASTERS; 

ginning  of  the  piece  is  about  the  running  away  of  Johnnie 
Cope's  men  :"* — 


u  Yet  in  that  craven,  dread-struck  host, 
One  vaProus  heart  beat  keen  and  high  ; 
In  that  dark  hour  of  shameful  flight, 

One  staid  behind  to  die  ! 
Deep  gash'd  by  many  a  felon  blow, 

He  sleeps  where  fought  the  vanquish'd  van,— 
Of  silver'd  locks  and  furrow'd  brow, 

A  venerable  man. 
E'en  when  his  thousand  warriors  fled, — 

Their  low-born  valor  quail'd  and  gone,— 
He, — the  meek  leader  of  that  band, — 
Remained,  and  fought  alone. 


*  The  following  are  the  opening  stanzas  of  the  piece,— quite  as  obnoxious  to  cntt 
dam,  I  fear,  as  those  selected  by  Walsh  :— 

"  Have  ye  not  seen,  on  winter's  eve, 

When  snow-rack  dimm'd  the  welkin's  face, 
Borne  wave-like,  by  the  fitful  breeze, 

The  snow-wreath  shifting  place? 
Silent  and  slow  as  drifting  wreath, 

Ere  day,  the  clans  from  Preston  Hill 
Mov'd  downward  to  the  vale  beneath : — 

Dark  was  the  scene,  and  still ! 
In  stormy  autumn  day,  when  sad 

The  boding  peasant  frets  forlorn, 
Have  ye  not  seen  the  mountain  stream 
Bear  down  the  standing  corn  ? 
At  dawn,  when  Preston  bog  was  cross'd, 

Like  mountain  stream  that  bursts  its  banks, 
Charged  wild  those  Celtic  hearts  of  fire, 

On  Cope's  devoted  ranks. 
Have  ye  not  seen,  from  lonesome  waste, 
The  smoke-tower  rising  tall  and  slow, 
Overlooking,  like  a  stately  tree, 

The  russet  plain  below  ? 
And  have  ye  mark'd  that  pillar'd  wreath 
When  sudden  struck  by  northern  blast, 
Amid  the  low  and  stunted  heath, 
In  broken  volumes  cast? 
At  sunrise,  as  by  northern  blast 

The  pillar'd  smoke  is  rull'd  away, 
Fled  all  that  cloud  of  Saxon  war. 
In  headlong  disarray." 


425 

He  stood ;  fierce  foemen  throng' .  around ; 

The  hollow  death-groan  of  despair, 
The  clashing  sword,  the  cleaving  axe, 

The  murd'rous  dirk  were  there. 
Valor  more  stark,  or  hands  more  strong, 

Ne'er  urged  the  brand  nor  launch'd  the  spear ; 
But  what  were  these  to  that  old  man  ! 

God  was  his  only  fear. 
He  stood  where  adverse  thousands  throng'd, 
And  long  that  warrior  fought  and  well ; — 
Bravely  he  fought,  firmly  he  stood, 
Till  where  he  stood  he  fell. 
He  fell, — he  breath'd  one  patriot  prayer, 

Then  to  his  God  his  soul  resign'd  ; 
Not  leaving  of  earth's  many  sous 

A  better  man  behind. 
His  valor,  his  high  scorn  of  death, 

To  fame's  proud  meed  no  impulse  ow'd ; 
His  was  a  pure,  unsullied  zeal, 

For  Britain  and  for  God. 
He  fell,— he  died  ;— the  savage  foe 

Trod  careless  o'er  the  noble  clay ; 
Yet  not  in  vain  the  champion  fought, 

In  that  disastrous  fray. 
On  bigot  creeds  and  felon  swords 

Partial  success  may  fondly  smile, 
Till  bleeds  the  patriot's  honest  heart, 
And  flames  the  martyr's  pile. 
Yet  not  in  vain  the  patriot  bleeds ; 
Yet  not  in  vain  the  martyr  dies! 
From  ashes  mute,  and  voiceless  blood, 
What  stirring  memories  rise ! 
The  scoffer  owns  the  bigot's  creed, 

Though  keen  the  secret  gibe  may  be ; 
The  sceptic  seeks  the  tyrant's  dome. 
And  bends  the  ready  knee. 
But  oh  !  in  dark  oppression's  day, 

When  flares  the  torch,  when  flames  the  sword, 
Who  are  the  brave  in  freedom's  cause  ? 
The  men  who  fear  the  Lord. 

"  Now  Ladies  and  Gentlemen,"  continued  the  critic,  "  this 
is  very  bad  poetry.  I  defy  any  elocutionist  to  read  it  satisfac- 
torily with  the  inflexes.  And,  besides,  only  see  how  full  it  is 
of  tautology.  Let  us  take  but  one  of  the  verses  : — '  He  fell, — 
he  died  !'     T}  fall  in  battle  means,  as  we  all  know,  to  die  in 


426  MY  SCHOOLS   AND  SCHOOLMASTERS; 

battle  ; — to  die  in  battle  is  exactly  the  same  thing  as  to  fall 
in  battle.  To  say,  '  he  fell, — he  died,'  is  therefore  just  tanta- 
mount to  saying  that  he  fell,  he  fell,  or  that  he  died,  he  died, 
and  is  bad  poetry  and  tautology.  And  this  is  one  of  the  ef- 
fects of  ignorance,  and  a  want  of  right  education."  Here,  how- 
ever, a  low  grumbling  sound,  gradually  shaping  itself  into 
words,  interrupted  the  lecturer.  There  was  a  worthy  old  cap- 
tain among  the  audience,  who  had  not  given  himself  very 
much  to  the  study  of  elocution  or  the  belles  lettres  ;  he  had  been 
too  much  occupied  in  his  younger  days  in  dealing  at  close 
quarters  with  the  French  under  Howe  and  Nelson,  to  leave 
him  much  time  for  the  niceties  of  recitation  or  criticism.  But 
the  brave  old  man  had  a  genial,  generous  heart ;  and  the  stric- 
tures of  the  elocutionist,  emitted,  as  all  saw,  in  the  presence 
of  the  assailed  author,  jarred  on  his  feelings.  "  It  was  not 
gentlemanly,"  he  said,  "  to  attack  in  that  way  an  inoffensive 
man :  it  was  wrong.  The  poems  were,  he  was  told,  very  good 
poems.  He  knew  good  judges  that  thought  so ;  and  unpro- 
voked remarks  on  them,  such  as  those  of  the  lecturer,  ought 
not  to  be  permitted."  The  lecturer  replied,  and  in  glibness  and 
fluency  would  have  been  greatly  an  overmatch  for  the  worthy 
captain  ;  but  a  storm  of  hisses  backed  the  old  veteran,  and 
the  critic  gave  way.  As  his  remarks  were,  he  said,  not  to  the 
taste  of  the  audience, — though  he  was  taking  only  the  ordi- 
nary critical  liberty, — he  would  go  on  to  the  readings.  And 
with  a  few  extracts,  read  without  note  or  comment,  the  enter- 
tainment of  the  evening  concluded.  There  was  nothing  very 
formidable  in  the  critique  of  Walsh ;  but  having  no  great  pow- 
ers of  face,  I  felt  it  rather  unpleasant  to  be  stared  at  in  my 
quiet  corner  by  every  one  in  the  room,  and  looked,  I  dare 
say,  very  much  put  out ;  and  the  sympathy  and  condolence 
of  such  of  my  townsfolk  as  comforted  me  in  the  state  of  sup- 
posed annihilation  ani  nothingness  to  which  his  criticism  had 
reduced  me,  were  just  a  little  annoying.  Poor  Walsh,  how- 
ever, had  he  but  known  what  threatened  him,  would  have 
been  considerably  less  at  ease  than  his  victim. 

The  Cousin  Walter  introduced  to  the  reader  in  an  early 

.13 


427 

chapter  as  the  companion  of  one  of  my  Highland  journeys, 
had  grown  up  into  a  handsome  and  very  powerful  young  man. 
One  might  have  guessed  his  stature  at  about  five  feet  ten  or 
so,  but  it  in  reality  somewhat  exceeded  six  feet :  he  had  amaz- 
ing length  and  strength  of  arm  ;  and  such  was  his  structure  of 
bone,  that,  as  he  tucked  up  his  sleeve  to  send  a  bowl  along  the 
town  links,  or  to  fling  the  hammer,  or  throw  the  stone,  the  knob- 
bed protuberances  of  the  wrist,  with  the  sinews  rising  sharp 
over  them,  reminded  one  rather  of  the  framework  of  a  horse's 
leg,  than  of  that  of  a  human  arm.  And  Walter,  though  a  fine, 
swTeet-tempered  fellow,  had  shown,  oftener  than  once  or  twice, 
that  he  could  make  a  very  formidable  use  of  his  great  strength. 
Some  of  the  later  instances  had  been  rather  interesting  in  their 
Kind.  There  had  been  a  large  Dutch  transport,  laden  with 
troops,  forced  by  stress  of  weather  into  the  bay  shortly  before, 
and  a  handsome  young  soldier  of  the  party, — a  native  of 
Northern  Germany,  named  Wolf, — had,  I  know  not  how, 
scraped  acquaintance  with  Walter.  Wolf,  who,  like  many  of 
his  country-folk,  was  a  great  reader,  and  intimately  acquainted, 
through  German  translations,  with  the  Waverley  Novels,  had 
taken  all  his  ideas  of  Scotland  and  its  people  from  the  descrip- 
tions of  Scott ;  and  in  Walter,  as  handsome  as  he  wras  robust, 
he  found  the  beau  ideal  of  a  Scottish  hero.  He  was  a  man 
cast  in  exactly  the  model  of  the  Harry  Bertrams,  Halbert  Glen- 
dinnings,  and  Quentin  Durwards  of  the  novelist.  For  the 
short  time  the  vessel  lay  in  the  harbor,  Wolf  and  Walter 
were  inseparable.  Walter  knew  a  little,  mainly  at  second 
hand,  through  his  cousin,  about  the  heroes  of  Scott ;  and  Wolf 
delighted  to  converse  with  him,  in  his  broken  English,  about 
Balfour  of  Burley,  Rob  Roy,  and  Vich  Ian  Vohr ;  and  ever 
and  anon  would  he  urge  him  to  exhibit  before  him  some  feat 
of  strength  or  agility, — a  call  to  w^hich  Walter  was  never  slow 
to  respond.  There  was  a  serjeant  among  the  troops, — a  Dutch- 
man,— regarded  as  their  strongest  man,  who  used  to  pride  him. 
self  much  on  his  prowess ;  and  who,  on  hearing  .Wolf 's  de- 
scription of  Walter,  expressed  a  wTish  to  be  introduced  to  him. 
Wolf  soon  found  the  means  of  gratifying  the  serjeant.     The 


428  MY  SCHOOLS  AND   SCHOOLMASTEKS ; 

strong  Dutchman  stretched  out  nis  hand,  and,  on  getting  nold 
of  Walter's,  grasped  it  very  hard.  Walter  saw  his  design, 
and  returned  the  grasp  with  such  overmastering  firmness,  that 
the  hand  became  powerless  within  his.  "  Ah  !"  exclaimed  the 
Dutchman,  in  his  broken  English,  shaking  his  fingers  and 
blowing  upon  them,  "  me  no  try  squeeze  hand  with  you  again ; 
you  very,  very  strong  man."  Wolf  for  a  minute  after  stood 
laughing  and  slapping  his  hands,  as  if  the  victory  were  his, 
not  Walter's.  When  at  length  the  day  arrived  on  which  the 
transport  was  to  sail,  the  two  friends  seemed  as  unwilling  to 
part  as  if  they  had  been  attached  for  years.  Walter  present- 
ed Wolf  with  a  favorite  snuff-box ;  Wolf  gave  W alter  his 
fine  German  pipe. 

Before  I  had  risen  on  the  morning  of  the  day  succeeding 
that  in  which  I  had  been  demolished  by  the  elocutionist,  Cou- 
sin Walter  made  his  way  to  my  bedside,  with  a  storm  on  his 
brow  dark  as  midnight.  "  Is  it  true,  Hugh,"  he  inquired,  "  that 
the  lecturer  W^alsh  ridiculed  you  and  your  poems  in  the  Coun- 
cil House  last  night  ?"  "  Oh,  and  what  of  that  V  I  said  ;  "  who 
cares  anything  for  the  ridicule  of  a  blockhead  V  "  Ay  !"  said 
Walter,  "  that's  always  your  way  ;  but  /care  for  it !  Had  I 
been  there  last  night,  I  would  have  sent  the  puppy  through 
the  window,  to  criticise  among  the  nettles  in  the  yard.  But 
there's  no  time  lost ;  I  shall  wait  on  him  when  it  grows  dark 
this  evening,  and  give  him  a  lesson  in  good  manners."  ;'  Not 
for  your  life,  Walter  !"  I  exclaimed.  "  Oh,"  said  Walter,  "  I 
shall  give  Walsh  all  manner  of  fair  play."  "  Fair  play  !"  I  re- 
joined ;  "  you  cannot  give  Walsh  fair  play  ;  you  are  an  over- 
match for  five  Walshes.  If  you  meddle  with  him  at  all,  you 
will  kill  the  poor  slim  man  at  a  blow,  and  then  not  only  will 
you  be  apprehended  for  manslaughter, — mayhap  for  murder, 
— but  it  will  also  be  said  that  I  was  mean  enough  to  set  you 
on  to  do  what  I  had  not  courage  enough  to  do  myself.  You 
must  give  up  all  thoughts  of  meddling  with  Walsh."  In  short, 
I  at  length  partially  succeeded  in  convincing  Walter  that  he 
might  do  me  a  great  mischief  by  assaulting  my  critic;  but  so 
little  confident  was  I  of  his  seeing  the  matter  in  its  proper 


429 

light,  that  when  the  lecturer,  unable  to  get  audiences,  quitted 
the  place,  and  Walter  h;id  no  longer  opportunity  of  aveng.ng 
my  cause,  I  felt  a  load  of  anxiety  taken  from  off  my  mind. 

There  reached  Cromarty  shortly  after,  a  criticism  that  dif- 
fered considerably  from  that  of  Walsh,  and  restored  the  shaken 
confidence  of  some  of  my  acquaintance.  The  other  criticisms 
which  had  appeared  in  newspapers,  literary  gazettes,  and  jour- 
nals, had  been  evidently  the  work  of  small  men ;  and,  feeble 
and  commonplace  in  their  style  and  thinking,  they  carried 
with  them  no  weight, — for  who  cares  anything  for  the  judg- 
ment, on  one's  writings,  of  men  who  themselves  cannot  write  1 
But  here,  at  length,  was  there  a  critique  eloquently  and  power- 
fully written.  It  was,  however,  at  least  as  extravagant  in  its 
praise  as  the  others  in  their  censure.  The  friendly  critic  knew 
nothing  of  the  author  he  commended;  but  he  had,  I  suppose, 
first  seen  the  depreciatory  criticisms,  and  then  glanced  his  eye 
over  the  volume  which  they  condemned  ;  and  finding  it  con- 
siderably better  than  it  was  said  to  be,  he  had  rushed  into  gen- 
erous praise,  and  described  it  as  really  a  great  deal  better  than 
it  was.  After  an  extravagantly  high  estimate  of  the  powers 
of  its  author,  he  went  on  to  say, — "  Nor,  in  making  these  ob- 
servations, do  we  speak  relatively,  or  desire  to  be  understood 
as  merely  saying  that  the  poems  before  us  are  remarkable 
productions  to  emanate  from  a  'journeyman  mason.'  That 
this  is  indeed  the  case,  no  one  who  reads  them  can  doubt ;  but 
in  characterizing  the  poetical  talent  they  display,  our  obser- 
vations are  meant  to  be  quite  absolute;  and  we  aver,  without 
fear  of  contradiction,  that  the  pieces  contained  in  the  humble 
volume  before  us  bear  the  stamp  and  impress  of  no  ordinary 
genius ;  that  they  are  bespangled  with  gems  of  genuine  po- 
etry ;  and  that  their  unpretending  author  well  deserves — 
what  he  will  doubtless  obtain — the  countenance  and  support 
of  a  discerning  public.  Nature  is  not  an  aristocrat.  To  the 
ploughboy  following  his  team  a-field, — to  the  shepherd  tend- 
ing his  flocks  in  the  wilderness, — or  to  the  rude  cutter  of 
stone,  cramped  over  his  rough  occupation  in  the  wooden  shed, 
— she  sometimes  dispenses  her  richest  and  rarest  gifts  as>  ,:ber- 


430  MY   SCHOOLS   AND   SCHOOLMASTERS  J 

ally  as  to  the  proud  patrician,  or  the  titled  representative  of 
a  long  line  of  illustrious  ancestry.  She  is  no  respecter  of  per- 
sons ;  and  all  other  distinctions  yield  to  the  title  which  her 
favors  confer.  The  names,  be  they  ever  so  humble,  which  she 
illustrates,  need  no  other  decoration  to  recommend  them ;  and 
hence  even  that  of  our  'journeyman  mason'  may  yet  be  des- 
tined to  take  its  place  with  those  of  men  who,  like  him,  first 
poured  their  '  wood-notes  wild'  in  the  humblest  and  lowlies* 
sphere  of  life,  but,  raised  into  deathless  song,  have  become  fa- 
miliar as  household  words  to  all  who  love  and  admire  the  un- 
sophisticated productions  of  native  genius."  The  late  Dr.  James 
Browne  of  Edinburgh,  author  of  the  "  History  of  the  High- 
lands," and  working  Editor  of  the  "Encyclopedia  Britannica," 
was,  as  I  afterwards  learned,  the  writer  of  this  over-eulogistic, 
but  certainly,  in  the  circumstances,  generous  critique. 

Ultimately  I  found  my  circle  of  friends  very  considerably 
enlarged  by  the  publication  of  my  Verses  and  Letters.  Mr. 
Isaac  Forsyth  of  Elgin,  the  brother  and  biographer  of  the  well 
known  Joseph  Forsyth,  whose  classical  volume  on-  Italy  still 
holds  its  place  as  perhaps  the  best  work  to  which  the  traveller 
of  taste  in  that  country  can  commit  himself,  exerted  himself, 
as  the  most  influential  of  north-country  booksellers,  with  dis- 
interested kindness  in  my  behalf.  The  late  Sir  Thomas  Dick 
Lauder,  too,  resident  at  that  time  at  his  seat  at  Relugas  in 
Moray,  lent  me,  unsolicited,  his  influence  ;  and,  distinguished 
by  his  fine  taste  and  literary  ability,  he  ventured  to  pledge 
both  in  my  favor.  I  also  received  much  kindness  from  the 
late  Miss  Dunbar  of  Boath, — a  literary  lady  of  the  high  type 
of  the  last  age,  and  acquainted  in  the  best  literary  circles ;  but 
who,  now  late  in  life,  admitted  among  her  select  friends  one 
friend  more,  and  cheered  me  with  many  a  kind  letter,  and  in 
vited  my  frequent  visits  to  her  hospitable  mansion.  If,  in  my 
course  as  a  working  man,  I  never  incurred  pecuniary  obliga- 
tions, and  never  spent  a  shilling  for  which  I  had  not  previously 
labored,  it  was  certainly  not  from  want  of  opportunity  afford- 
ed me.  Miss  Dunbar  meant  what  she  said,  and  oftener  than 
once  did  she  press  her  purse  on  my  acceptance.     I  received 


431 

much  kindness,  too,  from  the  late  Principal  Baird.  The  ven- 
erable Principal,  when  on  one  of  his  Highland  journeys, — 
benevolently  undertaken  in  behalf  of  an  educational  scheme 
of  the  General  Assembly,  in  the  service  of  which  he  had  trav- 
elled, after  he  was  turned  of  seventy,  more  than  eight  thou- 
sand miles, — had  perused  my  Verses  and  Letters ;  and.  ex- 
pressing a  strong  desire  to  know  their  author,  my  friend  the 
editor  of  the  Courier  despatched  one  of  his  apprentices  to  Cro- 
marty, to  say  that  he  thought  the  opportunity  of  meeting  with 
such  a  man  ought  not  to  be  neglected.  I  accordingly  went  up 
to  Inverness,  and  had  an  interview  with  Dr.  Baird.  I  had 
known  him  previously  by  name  as  one  of  the  correspondents 
of  Burns,  and  the  editor  of  the  best  edition  of  the  poems  of 
Michael  Bruce ;  and,  though  aware  at  the  time  that  his  esti- 
mate of  what  I  had  done  was  by  much  too  high,  I  yet  felt 
flattered  by  his  notice.  He  urged  me  to  quit  the  north  for 
Edinburgh.  The  capital  furnished,  he  said,  the  proper  field 
for  a  literary  man  in  Scotland.  What  between  the  employ- 
ment furnished  by  the  newspapers  and  the  magazines,  he  was 
sure  I  would  effect  a  lodgment,  and  work  my  way  up ;  and, 
until  I  gave  the  thing  a  fair  trial,  1  would,  of  course,  come  and 
live  with  him.  I  felt  sincerely  grateful  for  his  kindness,  but 
declined  the  invitation.  I  did  think  it  possible,  that  in  some 
subordinate  capacity, — as  a  concocter  of  paragraphs,  or  an 
abridger  of  parliamentary  debates,  or  even  as  a  writer  of  occa- 
sional articles, — I  might  find  more  remunerative  employment 
than  as  a  stone-mason.  But  though  I  might  acquaint  myself 
in  a  large  town,  when  occupied  in  this  way,  with  the  world  of 
books,  I  questioned  whether  I  could  enjoy  equal  opportunities 
of  acquainting  myself  with  the  occult  and  the  new  in  natural 
science,  as  when  plying  my  labors  in  the  provinces  as  a  me- 
chanic. And  so  I  determined  that,  instead  of  casting  my- 
self on  an  exhausting  literary  occupation,  in  which  I  would 
have  to  draw  incessantly  on  the  stock  of  fact  and  reflection 
which  I  had  already  accumulated,  I  should  continue  for  at 
least  several  years  more  to  purchase  independence  by  my  la- 
bors as  a  mason,  and  employ  my  leisure  lours  in  adding  to 


432  MY   SCHOOLS   AND    SCHOOLMASTERS  ; 

my  fund,  gleaned  from  original  observation,  and  in  walks  not 
previously  trodden. 

The  venerable  Principal  set  me  upon  a  piece  of  literary  task- 
work, of  which,  save  for  his  advice,  I  would  never  have  thought, 
and  of  which  these  autobiographic  chapters  are  the  late  but 
legitimate  offspring.  "  Literary  men,"  he  said,  "  are  sometimes 
spoken  of  as  consisting  of  two  classes, — the  educated  and  the 
meducated ;  but  they  must  all  alike  have  an  education  before 
.hey  can  become  literary  men  ;  and  the  less  ordinary  the  mode 
in  which  the  education  has  been  acquired,  the  more  interest- 
ing  always  is  the  story  of  it.  I  wish  you  to  write  for  me  an 
account  of  yours."  I  accordingly  wrote  an  autobiographic 
sketch  for  the  Principal,  which  brought  up  my  story  till  my 
return,  in  1825,  from  the  south  country  to  my  home  in  the 
north,  and  which,  though  greatly  overladen  with  reflection 
and  remark,  has  preserved  for  me  both  the  thoughts  and  inci- 
dents of  an  early  time  more  freshly  than  if  they  had  been 
suffered  to  exist  till  now  as  mere  recollections  in  the  me- 
mory. I  next  set  myself  to  record,  in  a  somewhat  elaborate 
form,  the  traditions  of  my  native  place  and  the  surrounding 
district ;  and,  taking  the  work  very  leisurely,  not  as  labor, 
but  as  amusement, — for  my  labors,  as  at  an  earlier  period, 
continued  to  be  those  of  the  stone-cutter, — a  bulky  volume 
grew  up  under  my  hands.  I  had  laid  down  for  myself  two 
rules.  There  is  no  more  fetal  error  into  which  a  working 
man  of  a  literary  turn  can  fall,  than  the  mistake  of  deeming 
himself  too  good  for  his  humble  employments ;  and  yet  it  is  a 
mistake  as  common  as  it  is  fatal.  I  had  already  seen  several 
poor  wrecked  mechanics,  who,  believing  themselves  to  be 
poets,  and  regarding  the  manual  occupation  by  which  they 
could  alone  live  in  independence  as  beneath  them,  had  become 
in  consequence  little  better  than  mendicants ;  too  good  to  work 
for  their  bread,  but  not  too  good  virtually  to  beg  it ;  and,  look- 
ing upon  them  as  beacons  of  warning,  I  determined  that,  with 
God's  help,  I  should  give  their  error  a  wide  offing,  and  never 
associate  the  idea  of  meanness  with  an  honest  calling,  01  deem 
myself  too  good  to  be  independent.    And,  in  the  second  place, 


433 

as  I  saw  that  the  notice,  and  more  especially  the  hospitalities, 
of  persons  in  the  upper  walks,  seemed  to  exercise  a  deteriorat- 
ing effect  on  even  strong-minded  men  in  circumstances  such  as 
mine,  I  resolved  rather  to  avoid  than  court  the  attentions  from 
this  class  which  were  now  beginning  to  come  my  way.  John- 
son describes  his  "  Ortogrul  of  Basra"  as  a  thoughtful  and  med- 
itative man  ;  and  yet  he  tells  us,  that  after  he  had  seen  the  pa- 
lace of  the  Vizier,  and  "  admired  the  walls  hung  with  golden 
tapestry,  and  the  floors  covered  with  silken  carpets,  he  despised 
the  simple  neatness  of  his  own  little  habitation."  And  the 
lesson  of  the  fiction  is,  I  fear,  too  obviously  exemplified  in  the 
real  history  of  one  of  the  strongest-minded  men  of  the  last  age, 
— Robert  Burns.  The  poet  seems  to  have  left  behind  him 
much  of  his  early  complacency  in  his  humble  home,  in  the 
splendid  mansions  of  the  men  who,  while  they  foiled  worthily 
to  patronize  him,  injured  him  by  their  hospitalities.  I  found  it 
more  difficult,  however,  to  hold  by  this  second  resolution  than 
by  the  first.  As  I  was  not  large  enough  to  be  made  a  lion  of, 
the  invitations  which  came  my  way  were  usually  those  of  real 
kindness ;  and  the  advances  of  kindness  I  found  it  impossible 
always  to  repel  ;  and  so  it  happened  that  I  did  at  times  find 
myself  in  company  in  which  the  working  man  might  be  deem- 
ed misplaced  and  in  danger.  On  two  several  occasions,  for 
instance,  after  declining  previous  invitations  not  a  few,  I  had 
to  spend  a  week  at  a  time  as  the  guest  of  my  respected  friend 
Miss  Dunbar  of  Boath  ;  and  my  native  place  was  visited  by 
few  superior  men  that  I  had  not  to  meet  at  some  hospitable 
board.  But  I  trust  I  may  say,  that  the  temptations  failed  to 
injure  me ;  and  that  on  such  occasions  I  returned  to  my  ob- 
scure employments  and  humble  home,  grateful  for  the  kind 
ness  I  had  received,  but  in  no  degree  discontented  with  my 
lot. 

Miss  Dunbar  belonged,  as  I  have  said,  to  a  type  of  literary 
lady  now  well  nigh  passed  away,  but  of  which  we  find  frequent 
trace  in  the  epistolary  literature  of  the  last  century.  The 
class  comes  before  us  in  elegant  and  tasteful  letters,  indicative 
of  minds  embued  with  literature  though  mayhap  not  ambi- 


434  MY  SCHOOLS  AInD  schoolmasteks 


tious  of  authorsnip,  and  that  show  what  ornaments  their  writers 
must  have  proved  of  the  society  to  which  they  belonged,  and 
what  delight  they  must  have  given  to  the  circles  in  which  they 
more  immediately  moved.  The  Lady  Russel,  the  Lady  Lux- 
borough,  the  Countess  of  Pomfret,  Mrs.  Elizabeth  Montague, 
&c,  &c, — names  well  fixed  in  the  epistolary  literature  of 
England,  though  unknown  in  the  walks  of  ordinary  author 
ship, — may  be  regarded  as  specimens  of  the  class.  Even  in 
the  cases  in  which  its  members  did  become  authoresses,  and 
produced  songs  and  ballads  instinct  with  genius,  they  seem  to 
have  had  but  little  of  the  author's  ambition  in  them  ;  and 
their  songs,  cast  carelessly  upon  the  waters,  have  been  found, 
after  many  days,  preserved  rather  by  accident  than  design. 
The  Lady  Wardlaw,  who  produced  the  noble  ballad  of"  Hardy- 
knute," — the  Lady  Ann  Lindsay,  who  wrote  "  Auld  Robin 
Gray," — the  Miss  Blamire,  whose  "  Nabob"  is  so  charming  a 
composition,  notwithstanding  its  unfortunately  prosaic  name, 
— and  the  late  Lady  Nairne,  authoress  of  the  "  Land  o'  the 
Leal,"  "  John  Tod,"  and  the  "  Laird  o'  Cockpen," — are  speci- 
mens of  the  class  that  fixed  their  names  among  the  poets  with 
apparently  as  little  effort  or  design  as  singing  birds  pour  forth 
their  melodies. 

The  north  had,  in  the  last  age,  its  interesting  group  of  ladies 
of  this  type,  of  whom  the  central  figure  might  be  regarded  as 
the  late  Mrs.  Elizabeth  Rose  of  Kilravock,  the  correspondent  of 
Burns,  and  the  cousin  and  associate  of  Henry  Mackenzie,  the 
"  Man  of  Feeling."  Mrs.  Rose  seems  to  have  been  a  lady  of  a 
singularly  fine  mind, — a  little  touched,  mayhap,  by  the  prevail- 
ing sentimentalism  of  the  age.  The  Mistress  of  Harley,  Miss 
Walton,  might  have  kept  exactly  such  journals  as  hers ;  but  the 
talent  which  they  exhibited  was  certainly  of  a  high  order ;  and 
the  feeling,  though  cast  in  a  somewhat  artificial  mould,  was,  I 
doubt  not,  sincere.  Portions  of  those  journals,  by  the  way,  1 
had  an  opportunity  of  perusing  when  on  my  visits  to  my  friend 
Miss  Dunbar ;  and  there  is  a  copy  of  one  of  them  now  in  my 
possessic  n.  Another  member  of  this  group  was  the  late  Mrs. 
Grant  of  Laggan, — at  the  time  when  it  existed  unbroken,  the 


:6D 


mistress  of  a  remote  Highland  manse,  and  known  but  to  her 
personal  friends  by  those  earlier  letters  which  form  the  first 
half  o^  her  "  Letters  from  the  Mountains,"  and  which,  in  ease 
and  freshness  greatly  surpass  aught  which  she  produced  after 
she  began  hei  ^areer  of  authorship.  Not  a  few  of  her  letters, 
and  several  of  her  poems,  were  addressed  to  my  friend  Miss 
Dunbar.  Some  of  the  other  members  of  the  group  were 
greatly  younger  than  Mrs.  Grant  and  the  Lady  of  Kilravock. 
And  of  these,  one  of  the  most  accomplished  was  the  late  Lady 
Gordon  Cumming  of  Altyre,  known  to  scientific  men  by  her 
geologic  labors  among  the  ichthyolitic  formations  of  Moray, 
and  mother  of  the  famous  lion-hunter,  Mr.  Gordon  Cumming. 
My  friend  Miss  Dunbar  was  at  this  time  considerably  ad- 
vanced in  life,  and  her  health  far  from  good.  She  possessed, 
however,  a  singular  buoyancy  of  spirits,  wdiich  years  and  fre- 
quent illness  had  failed  to  depress  ;  and  her  interest  and  enjoy- 
ment in  nature  and  in  books  remained  as  high  as  when,  long 
before,  her  friend  Mrs.  Grant  had  addressed  her  as 

"Helen,  by  every  sympathy  allied, 

By  love  of  virtue  and  by  love  of  song, 
Compassionate  in  youth  and  beauty's  pride." 

Her  mind  was  imbued  with  literature,  and  stored  with  literary 
anecdote  :  she  conversed  with  elegance,  giving  interest  to  what- 
ever she  touched  ;  and,  though  she  seemed  never  to  have 
thought  of  authorship  in  her  own  behalf,  she  wrote  pleasingly 
and  with  great  facility,  in  both  prose  and  verse.  Her  verses, 
usually  of  a  humorous  cast,  ran  trippingly  off  the  tongue,  as 
if  the  words  had  dropped  by  some  happy  accident, — for  the 
arrangement  bore  no  mark  of  effort, — into  exactly  the  places 
where  they  at  once  best  brought  out  the  writer's  meaning,  and 
addressed  themselves  most  pleasingly  to  the  ear.  The  open- 
ing stanzas  of  a  light  jeu  d? esprit  on  a  young  naval  officer  en- 
gaged in  a  lady-killing  expedition  in  Cromarty,  dwell  in  my 
memory  ;  and — fir*t  premising,  by  way  of  explanation,  that 
Miss  Dunbar's  brother,  the  late  Baronet  of  Boath,  was  a  cap- 
tain in  the  navy,  and  that  the  lady-killer  was  his  first  lieuten- 


436  MY  SCHOOLS  AND  SCHOOLMASTEKS  ; 

ant — I  may  take  the  liberty  of  giving  all  I  remember  of  the 
piece,  as  a  specimen  of  her  easy  style  : — 

"In  Cromarty  Bay, 

As  the  '  Driver'  snug  lay, 
The  Lieutenant  would  venture  ashore ; 

And,  a  figure  to  cut, 

From  the  head  to  the  foot 
He  was  fashion  and  finery  all  o'er. 

A  hat  richly  lae'd, 

To  the  left  side  was  placed, 
Which  made  him  look  martial  and  bold"; 

His  coat  of  true  blue 

Was  spick  and  span  new, 
And  his  buttons  were  burnished  with  gold". 

His  neckcloth  well  puff 'd, 

Which  six  handkerchiefs  stuff 'dr 
And  in  color  with  snow  might  have  vied, 

Was  put  on  with  great  care, 

As  a  bait  for  the  fair, 
And  the  ends  in  a  love-knot  were  tied,"  &.c,  &e. 

I  greatly  enjoyed  my  visits  to  this  genial-hearted  and  accom- 
plished lady.  No  chilling  condescensions  on  her  part  meas- 
ured out  to  me  my  distance  :  Miss  Dunbar  took  at  once  the 
common  ground  of  literary  tastes  and  pursuits  ;  and  if  I  did 
not  feel  my  inferiority  there,  she  took  care  that  I  should  feel 
it  nowhere  else.  There  was  but  one  point  on  which  we  dif- 
fered. While  hospitably  extending  to  me  every  facility  for 
visiting  the  objects  of  scientific  interest  in  her  neighborhood, 
— such  as  those  sand-wastes  of  Culbin,  in  which  an  ancient 
barony  finds  burial,  and  the  geologic  sections  presented  by 
the  banks  of  the  Findhorn, — she  was  yet  desirous  to  fix  me 
down  to  literature  as  my  proper  walk  ;  and  I,  on  the  other 
hand,  wras  equally  desirous  of  escaping  into  science. 


OB.    THE   STORY    OP   MY   EDUCATION.  437 


CHAPTER  XXI 


ttHe  who,  with  pocket  hammer,  smites  the  edge 
Of  luckless  rock  or  prominent  stone,  disguised 
In  weather  stains,  or  crusted  o'er  by  nature 
With  her  first  growths,— detaching  by  the  stroke 
A  chip  or  splinter,  to  resolve  his  doubts ; 
And,  with  that  ready  answer  satisfied, 
The  substance  classes  by  some  barbarous  name, 
And  hurries  on." 

Wordsworth. 


It  the  course  of  my  two  visits  to  Miss  Dunbar,  I  had  sev- 
eral opportunities  of  examining  the  sand-wastes  of  Culbin,  and 
of  registering  some  of  the  peculiarities  which  distinguish  the 
arenaceous  sub-aerial  formation  from  the  arenaceous  sub-aque- 
ous deposit.  Of  the  present  surface  of  the  earth,  considerably 
more  than  six  millions  of  square  miles  are  occupied  in  Africa 
and  Asia  alone  by  sandy  deserts.  With  but  the  interruption 
of  the  narrow  valley  of  the  Nile,  an  enormous  zone  of  arid 
sand,  full  nine  hundred  miles  across,  stretches  from  the  east- 
ern coast  of  Africa  to  within  a  few  days' journey  of  the  Chinese 
frontier :  it  is  a  belt  that  girdles  nearly  half  the  globe ; — a  vast 
"  ocean,'*  according  to  the  Moors,  "  without  water."  The 
sandy  deserts  of  the  rainless  district  of  Chili  are  also  of  great 
extent ;  and  there  ai  e  few  countries  in  even  the  higher  lati- 
tudes that  have  not  their  tracts  of  arenaceous  waste.  These 
sandy  tracts,  so  common  in  the  present  scene  of  things,  could 


438  MY  SCHOOLS    AND   SCHOOLMASTERS; 

not,  I  argued,  be  restricted  to  the  recent  geologic  periods.  They 
must  have  existed,  like  all  the  commoner  phenomena  of  nature, 
under  every  succeeding  system  in  which  the  sun  shone,  and 
the  winds  blew,  and  ocean-beds  were  upheaved  to  the  air  and 
the  light,  and  the  waves  threw  upon  the  shore,  from  arena- 
ceous sea-bottoms,  their  accumulations  of  light  sand.  And  1 
was  now  employed  in  acquainting  myself  with  the  marks  by 
which  I  might  be  able  to  distinguish  sub-aerial  from  sub-aque- 
ous formation,  among  the  ever-recurring  sandstone-beds  of  the 
geologic  deposits.  I  have  spent,  when  thus  engaged,  very  de- 
lightful hours  amid  the  waste.  In  pursuing  one's  education, 
it  is  always  very  pleasant  to  get  into  those  forms  that  are  not 
yet  introduced  into  any  school. 

One  of  the  peculiarities  of  the  sub-aerial  formation  which  I 
at  this  time  detected  struck  me  as  curious.  On  approaching, 
among  the  sand-hills,  an  open  level  space,  covered  thickly 
over  with  water-rolled  pebbles  and  gravel,  I  was  surprised  to 
see  that,  dry  and  hot  as  the  day  was  elsewhere,  the  little  open 
space  seemed  to  have  been  subjected  to  a  weighty  dew  or  smart 
shower.  The  pebbles  glistened  bright  in  the  sun,  and  bore  the 
darkened  hue  of  recent  wet.  On  examination,  however,  I 
found  that  the  rays  were  reflected,  not  from  wetted,  but  from 
polished  surfaces.  The  light  grains  of  sand,  dashed  against 
the  pebbles  by  the  winds  during  a  long  series  of  years, — grain 
after  grain  repeating  its  minute  blow,  where,  mayhap,  millions 
of  grains  had  struck  before, — had  at  length  given  a  resinous- 
looking,  uneven  polish  to  all  their  exposed  portions,  while  the 
portions  covered  up  retained  the  dull  unglossy  coat  given  them 
of  old  by  the  agencies  of  friction  and  water.  I  have  not 
heard  the  peculiarity  described  as  a  characteristic  of  the  are- 
naceous deserts;  but  though  it  seems  to  have  escaped  no- 
tice, it  will,  I  doubt  not,  be  found  to  obtain  wherever  there 
are  sands  for  the  wrinds  to  waft  along,  and  hard  pebbles  against 
which  thfc,  grains  may  be  propelled.  In  examining,  many 
years  after,  a  few  specimens  of  silicefied  wood  brought  from 
the  Egyptian  desert,  I  at  once  recognized  on  their  flinty  sur- 
faces the  resinous-like  gloss  of  the  pebbles  of  Culbin;  nor  can 


439 

I  doubt  that,  if  geology  has  its  sub-aerial  formations  of  consol- 
idated sand,  they  will  be  found  characterised  by  their  polished 
pebbles.  I  marked  several  other  peculiarities  of  the  forma- 
tion. In  some  of  the  abrupter  sections  laid  open  by  the  winds, 
tufts  of  the  bent-grass  (Arundo  arenaria, — common  here,  as 
in  all  sandy  wastes)  that  had  been  buried  up  where  they 
grew,  might  be  distinctly  traced,  each  upright  in  itself,  but 
rising  tuft  above  tuft  in  the  steep  angle  of  the  hillock  which 
they  had  originally  covered.  And  though,  from  their  dark 
color,  relieved  against  the  lighter  hue  of  the  sand,  they  remind- 
ed me  of  the  carbonaceous  markings  of  sandstones  of  the  Coal 
Measures,  I  recognised  at  least  their  arrangement  as  unique. 
It  seems  to  be  such  an  arrangement, — sloping  in  the  general 
line,  but  upright  in  each  of  the  tufts, — as  could  take  place  in 
only  a  sub-aerial  formation.  I  observed  further,  that  in  frequent 
instances  there  occurred  on  the  surface  of  the  sand,  around  de- 
caying tufts  of  the  bent-grass,  deeply-marked  circles,  as  if  drawn 
by  a  pair  of  compasses,  or  a  trainer, — effects,  apparently,  of  eddy 
winds  whirling  round,  as  on  a  pivot,  the  decayed  plants ;  and 
yet  further,  that  footprints,  especially  those  of  rabbits  and  birds, 
were  not  unfrequent  in  the  waste.  And  as  lines  of  stratification 
were,  I  found,  distinctly  preserved  in  the  formation,  I  deemed  it 
not  improbable  that,  in  cases  in  which  high  winds  had  arisen, 
immediately  after  tracts  of  wet  weather,  and  covered  with  sand, 
rapidly  dried  on  the  heights,  the  damp  beds  in  the  hollows, 
both  the  circular  markings  and  the  footprints  might  remain 
fixed  in  the  strata,  to  tell  of  their  origin.  I  found  in  several 
places,  in  chasms  scooped  out  by  a  recent  gale,  pieces  of  the 
ancient  soil  laid  bare,  which  had  been  covered  up  by  the  sand 
flood  nearly  two  centuries  before.  In  one  of  the  openings 
he  marks  of  the  ancient  furrows  were  still  discernible ;  in  an- 
other, the  thin  stratum  of  ferruginous  soil  had  apparently  never 
been  brought  under  the  plough ;  and  I  found  it  charged  with 
"roots  of  the  common  brake  (Pteris  aquiliiia),  in  a  perfect 
state  :>f  keeping,  but  black  and  brittle  as  coal.  Beneath  this 
layer  of  soil  lay  a  thin  deposit  of  the  stratified  gravel  of  what 
is  now  known  as  the  later  glacial  period, — the  age  of  onars  and 


440  MY  SCHO)LS  AND    SCHOOLMASTERS; 

moraines ;  and  beneath  all — for  the  underlying  Old  Red  Sand- 
stone of  the  district  is  not  exposed  amid  the  level  wastes  of 
Culbin — rested  the  boulder  clay,  the  memorial  of  a  time  of 
submergence,  when  Scotland  sat  low  in  the  sea  as  a  wintry 
archipelago  of  islands,  brushed  by  frequent  icebergs,  and  when 
sub-arctic  molluscs  lived  in  her  sounds  and  bays.  A  section 
of  a  few  feet  in  vertical  extent  presented  me  with  four  distinct 
periods.  There  was,  first,  the  period  of  the  sand-flood,  repre- 
sented by  the  bar  of  pale  sand  ;  then,  secondly,  the  period  of 
cultivation  and  human  occupancy,  represented  by  the  dark 
plough-furrowed  belt  of  hardened  soil ;  thirdly,  there  was  the 
gravel ;  and,  fourthly,  the  clay.  And  that  shallow  section  ex- 
hausted the  historic  ages,  and  more ;  for  the  double  band  of 
gravel  and  clay  belonged  palpably  to  the  geologic  ages,  ere 
man  had  appeared  on  our  planet.  There  had  been  found  in  the 
locality,  only  a  few  years  previous  to  this  time,  a  considerable 
number  of  stone  arrow-heads, — some  of  them  only  partially 
finished,  and  some  of  them  marred  in  the  making,  as  if  some 
fletcher  of  the  stone-age  had  carried  on  his  work  on  the  spot ; 
and  all  these  memorials  of  a  time  long  anterior  to  the  first 
beginnings  of  history  in  the  island  were  restricted  to  the 
stratum  of  hardened  mould. 

I  carried  on  my  researches  in  this — what  I  may  term  the 
chronological — direction,  in  connection  with  the  old-coast  line, 
which,  as  I  have  already  said,  is  finely  developed  in  the 
neighborhood  of  Cromarty  on  both  sides  of  the  Frith,  and 
represented  along  the  precipices  of  the  Sutors  by  its  line  of 
deep  caves,  into  which  the  sea  never  now  enters.  And  it, 
too,  pressed  upon  me  the  fact  of  the  amazing  antiquity  of  the 
globe.  I  found  that  the  caves  hollowed  by  the  surf,  when 
the  sea  had  stood  from  fifteen  to  five-and-twenty  feet  above  its 
present  level,  or,  as  I  should  perhaps  rather  say,  when  the 
land  had  stood  that  much  lower,  were  deeper,  on  the  average,  by 
about  one-third,  than  those  caves  of  the  present  coast-line  that 
are  still  in  the  course  of  being  hollowed  by  the  waves.  And 
yet  the  waves  have  been  breaking  against  the  present  coast- 
line during  the  whole  of  the  historic  period.     The  ancient 


441 

wall  of  Antoninus,  which  stretched  between  the  Friths  of  Forth 
and  Clyde,  was  built  at  its  terminations  with  reference  to  the 
existing  levels  ;  and  ere  Caesar  landed  in  Britain,  St.  Michael's 
Mount  was  connected  with  the  mainland,  as  now,  by  a  narrow 
neck  of  beach  laid  bare  by  the  ebb,  across  which,  according 
to  Diodorus  Siculus,  the  Cornish  miners  used  to  drive,  at  low 
water,  their  carts  laden  with  tin.  If  the  sea  has  stood  for 
two  thousand  six  hundred  years  against  the  present  coast-line^ 
■ — and  no  geologist  would  fix  his  estimate  of  the  term  lower,— 
then  must  it  have  stood  against  the  old  line,  ere  it  could 
have  excavated  caves  one-third  deeper  than  the  modern  ones, 
three  thousand  nine  hundred  years.  And  both  sums  united 
more  than  exhaust  the  Hebrew  chronology.  Yet  what  a  mere 
beginning  of  geologic  history  docs  not  the  epoch  of  the  old- 
coast  line  form  !  It  is  but  a  starting  point  from  the  recent  pe- 
riod. Not  a  single  shell  seems  to  have  become  extinct  during 
the  last  six  thousand  years.  The  organisms  which  I  found 
deeply  imbedded  in  the  soil  beneath  the  old-coast  line  were 
exactly  those  which  still  live  in  our  seas  ;  and  I  have  been  since 
told  by  Mr.  Smith  of  Jordanhill,  one  of  our  highest  authorities 
on  the  subject,  that  he  detected  only  three  shells  of  the  period 
with  which  he  was  not  familiar  as  existing  forms,  and  that  he 
subsequently  met  with  all  three,  in  his  dredging  expeditions, 
still  alive.  The  six  thousand  years  of  human  history  form  but 
a  portion  of  the  geologic  day  that  is  passing  over  us  :  they  do 
not  extend  into  the  yesterday  of  the  globe,  far  less  touch  the 
myriads  of  ages  spread  out  beyond.  Dr.  Chalmers  had  taught, 
more  than  a  quarter  of  a  century  previous  to  this  time,  that 
the  Scriptures  do  not  fix  the  antiquity  of  the  earth.  "  If  they 
fix  anything,"  he  said,  "  it  is  only  the  antiquity  of  the  human 
species."  The  Doctor,  though  not  practically  a  geologist  at 
the  time,  had  shrewdly  weighed  both  the  evidence  adduced 
and  the  scientific  character  of  the  men  who  adduced  it,  and 
arrived  at  a  conclusion,  in  consequence,  which  may  now  be 
safely  regarded  as  the  final  one.  I,  on  the  other  hand,  who 
knew  comparatively  little  about  the  standing  of  the  geologists, 
or  the  weight  which  ought  to  attach  to  their  testimony,  based 


442  MY  SCHOOLS  AND  SCHOOLMASTERS; 

my  findings  regarding  the  vast  antiquity  of  the  earth  on  ex 
actly  the  data  on  which  they  had  founded  theirs ;  and  the  mora 
my  acquaintance  with  the  geologic  deposits  has  since  extend- 
ed, the  firmer  have  my  convictions  on  the  subject  become,  and 
the  more  pressing  and  inevitable  have  I  felt  the  ever-growing 
demand  for  longer  and  yet  longer  periods  for  their  formation. 
As  certainly  as  the  sun  is  the  centre  of  our  system,  must  our 
earth  have  revolved  around  it  for  millions  of  years.  An 
American  theologian,  the  author  of  a  little  book  entitled  the' 
"  Epoch  of  Creation,"  in  doing  me  the  honor  of  referring  to 
my  convictions  on  this  subject,  states,  that  I  "  betray  indubi- 
table tokens  of  being  spell-bound  to  the  extent  of  infatuation, 
by  the  foregone  conclusion  of"  my  "  theory  concerning  the  high 
antiquity  of  the  earth,  and  the  succession  of  animal  and  vege- 
table creations."  He  adds  further,  in  an  eloquent  sentence,  a 
page  and  a  half  long,  that  had  I  first  studied  and  credited  my 
Bible,"  I  would  have  failed  to  believe  in  successive  creations 
and  the  geologic  chronology.  I  trust,  however,  I  may  say  I  did 
first  study  and  believe  my  Bible.  But  such  is  the  structure  of 
the  human  mind,  that,  save  when  blinded  by  passion  or  warped 
by  prejudice,  it  must  yield  an  involuntary  consent  to  the  force 
of  evidence ;  and  I  can  now  no  more  refuse  believing,  in  op- 
position to  respectable  theologians  such  as  Mr.  Granville  Penn, 
Professor  Moses  Stuart,  and  Mr.  Eliezar  Lord,  that  the  earth  is 
of  an  antiquity  incalculably  vast,  than  I  can  refuse  believing, 
in  opposition  to  still  more  respectable  theologians,  suck  as  St. 
Augustine,  Lactantius,  and  Turretin,  that  it  has  antipodes,  and 
moves  round  the  sun.  And  further,  of  this,  men  such  as  the 
Messrs.  Penn,  Stuart,  and  Lord  may  rest  assured,  that  what  I 
believe  in  this  matter  now,  all  theologians,  even  the  weakest, 
will  be  content  to  believe  fifty  years  hence. 

Sometimes  a  chance  incident  taught  me  an  interesting  geo 
logical  lesson.  At  the  close  of  the  year  1830,  a  tremendous 
hurricane  from  the  south  and  west,  unequalled  in  the  north  of 
Scotland,  from  at  least  the  time  of  the  great  hurricane  of 
Christmas  1806,  blew  down  in  a  single  hour  four  thousand  full- 
grown  trees  on  the  Hill  of  Cromarty.     The  vast  gaps  and  ave- 


OR,    THE   STORY   OF   MY   EDUCATION.  443 

nues  which  it  opened  in  the  wood  above  could  be  seen  from 
the  town  ;  and  no  sooner  had  it  began  to  take  off  than  I  set  out. 
for  the  scene  of  its  ravages.  I  had  previously  witnessed,  from 
a  sheltered  hollow  of  the  old-coast  line,  the  extraordinary  ap- 
pearance of  the  sea.  It  would  seem  as  if  the  very  violence  of 
the  wind  had  kept  down  the  waves.  It  brushed  off  their  tops 
as  they  were  rising,  and  swept  along  the  spray  in  one  dense 
cloud,  white  as  driving  snow,  that  rose  high  into  the  air  as  it 
receded  from  the  shore,  and  blotted  out  along  the  horizon  the 
line  between  sky  and  water.  As  I  approached  the  wood,  I 
met  two  poor  little  girls  of  from  eight  to  ten  years,  coming 
running  and  crying  along  the  road  in  a  paroxysm  of  conster- 
nation ;  but,  gathering  heart  on  seeing  me,  they  stood  to  tell 
that  when  the  storm  was  in  its  worst,  they  were  in  the  midst 
of  the  falling  trees.  Setting  out  for  the  Hill  on  the  first 
rising  of  the  wind,  in  the  expectation  of  a  rich  harvest  of 
withered  boughs,  they  had  reached  one  of  its  most  exposed 
ridges  just  as  the  gale  had  attained  to  its  extreme  height,  and 
the  trees  began  to  crash  down  around  them.  Their  little  tear- 
bestained  countenances  still  continued  to  show  how  extreme 
the  agony  of  their  terror  had  been.  They  would  run,  they  said, 
for  a  few  paces  in  one  direction,  until  some  huge  pine  would 
come  roaring  down,  and  block  up  their  path ;  when,  turning 
with  a  shriek,  they  would  run  for  a  few  paces  in  another ; 
and  then,  terrified  by  a  similar  interruption,  again  strike  off 
in  a  third.  At  length,  after  passing  nearly  an  hour  in  the  ex- 
tremest  peril,  and  in  at  least  all  the  fear  which  the  circum- 
stances justified,  they  succeeded  in  making  their  way  unhurt  to 
the  outer  skirts  of  the  wood.  Bewick  would  have  found  in  the 
incident  the  subject  of  a  vignette  that  would  have  told  its  own 
story.  In  getting  into  the  thick  of  the  trees,  I  was  struck  by 
the  extraordinary  character  of  the  scene  presented.  In  some 
places,  greatly  more  than  half  their  number  lay  stretched  upon 
the  ground.  On  the  more  exposed  prominences  of  the  Hill, 
scarce  a  tree  was  left  standing  for  acres  together :  they  covered 
the  slopes,  tree  stretched  over  tree,  like  tiles  on  a  roof,  with  here 
and  there  some  shattered  trunk  whose  top  had  been  blown  off, 
20 


and  carried  by  the  hurricane  some  fifteen  or  twenty  yard 
away,  leaning  in  sad  ruin  over  its  fallen  comrades.  Wha* 
however,  formed  the  most  striking,  because  less  expected,  parts 
of  the  scene,  were  the  tall  walls  of  turf  that  stood  up  every 
where  among  the  fallen  trees,  like  the  ruins  of  dismantled  cot- 
tages.  The  granitic  gneiss  of  the  Hill  is  covered  by  a  thick  de- 
posit of  the  red  boulder  clay  of  the  district,  and  the  clay,  in  turn, 
by  a  thin  layer  of  vegetable  mould,  interlaced  in  every  direction 
by  the  tree  roots,  which,  arrested  in  their  downward  progress 
by  the  stiff  clay,  are  restricted  to  the  upper  layer.  And,  save 
where  here  and  there  I  found  some  tree  snapped  across  in  the 
midst,  or  divested  of  its  top,  all  the  others  had  yielded  at  the 
line  between  the  boulder  clay  and  the  soil,  and  had  torn  up, 
as  they  fell,  vast  walls  of  the  felted  turf,  from  fifteen  to  twenty 
feet  in  length,  by  from  ten  to  twelve  feet  in  height.  There 
were  quite  enough  of  these  walls  standing  up  among  the  pros- 
trate trees,  to  have  formed  a  score  of  the  eastern  Sultan's  ruined 
villages ;  and  they  imparted  to  the  scene  one  of  its  strangest 
features.  I  have  mentioned  in  an  early  chapter  that  the  Hill 
had  its  dense  thickets,  which,  from  the  gloom  that  brooded  in 
their  recesses  even  at  mid-day,  were  known  to  the  boys  of  the 
neighboring  town  as  the  "  dungeons."  They  had  now  fared, 
however,  in  this  terrible  overturn,  like  dungeons  elsewhere  in 
times  of  revolution,  and  were  all  swept  away  ;  and  piles  of  pros- 
trate trees — in  come  instances  ten  or  twelve  in  a  single  heap 
— marked  where  they  had  stood.  In  several  localities,  where 
they  fell  over  swampy  hollows,  or  where  deep-seated  springs 
came  gushing  to  the  light,  I  found  the  water  partially  dammed 
up,  and  saw  that,  were  they  to  be  left  to  cumber  the  ground  as 
the  debris  of  forests  destroyed  by  hurricanes  in  the  earlier  ages  of 
Scottish  history  would  certainly  have  been  left,  the  deep  shade 
and  the  moisture  could  not  have  failed  to  induce  a  total  change 
in  the  vegetation.  I  marked,  too,  the  fallen  trees  all  lying  one 
way,  in  the  direction  of  the  wind  ;  and  the  thought  at  once 
struck  me,  that  in  this  recent  scene  of  devastation  I  had  the  ori 
gin  of  full  one  half  of  our  Scottish  mosses  exemplified.  Some 
of  the  mosses  of  the  south  date  from  the  times  of  Reman  in- 


OR,    THE   STORY   OF   MY   EDUCATION.  445 

vasion.  Their  lower  tiers  of  trunk  bear  the  mark  of  the  Ro- 
man axe,  and,  in  some  instances,  the  sorely  wasted  axe  itself 
— a  narrow,  oblong  tool,  somewhat  resembling  that  of  the 
American  backwoodsman — has  been  found  sticking  in  the  bur- 
ied stump.  Some  of  our  other  mosses  are  of  still  more  mod- 
ern origin  :  there  exist  Scottish  mosses  that  seem  to  have  been 
formed  when  Robert  the  Bruce  felled  the  woods  and  wasted 
the  country  of  John  of  Lorn.  But  of  the  others,  not  a  few 
have  palpably  owed  their  origin  to  violent  hurricanes,  such  as 
the  one  which  on  this  occasion  ravaged  the  Hill  of  Cromarty. 
The  trees  which  form  their  lower  stratum  are  broken  across, 
or  torn  up  by  the  roots,  and  their  trunks  all  lie  one  way.  Much 
of  the  interest  of  a  science  such  as  geology  must  consist  in  the 
ability  of  making  dead  deposits  represent  living  scenes;  and 
from  this  hurricane  I  was  enabled  to  conceive,  pictorially,  if 
I  may  so  express  myself,  of  the  origin  of  those  comparatively 
recent  deposits  of  Scotland  which,  formed  almost  exclusively 
of  vegetable  matter,  contain,  with  rude  works  of  art,  and  oc- 
casional remains  of  the  early  human  inhabitants  of  the  coun- 
try, skeletons  of  the  wolf,  the  bear,  and  the  beaver,  with  horns 
of  the  bos  primigenius  and  60s  long  if r  oris,  and  of  a  gigantic 
variety  of  red  deer,  unequalled  in  size  by  animals  of  the  same 
species  in  these  later  ages. 

Occasionally  I  was  enabled  to  vivify  in  this  way  even  the 
ancient  deposits  of  the  Lias,  with  their  vast  abundance  of 
cephalopodous  mollusca, — belemnites,  ammonites,  and  nautili. 
My  friend  of  the  Cave  had  become  parish  schoolmaster  of 
Nigg;  and  his  hospitable  dwelling  furnished  me  with  an  ex- 
cellent centre  for  exploring  the  geology  of  the  parish,  especial- 
ly its  Liasic  deposits  at  Shandwick,  with  their  huge  gryphites 
and  their  numerous  belemnites,  of  at  least  two  species,  com- 
paratively rare  at  Eathie, — the  belemnite  abreviatus  and  be 
lemnite  elongatus.  I  had  learned  that  these  curious  shells 
once,  formed  part  of  the  internal  framework  of  a  mollusc  more 
nearly  akin  to  the  cuttle-fishes  of  the  present  day  than  aught 
else  that  now  exists ;  and  the  cuttle-fishes — not  rare  in  at  least 
one  of  their  species  (loligo  vulgare)  in  the  Frith  of  Cromartv 


446  MY    SCHOOLS   AND   SCHOOLHASTEKS  ; 

■ — I  embraced,  every  opportunity  of  examining.  I  have  seen 
from  eighteen  to  twenty  individuals  of  this  species  enclosed  a* 
once  in  the  inner  chamber  of  one  of  our  salmon  wears.  The 
greater  number  of  these  shoals  I  have  ordinarily  found  dead, 
and  tinged  with  various  shades  of  green,  blue,  and  yellow, — 
for  it  is  one  of  the  characteristics  of  the  creature  to  assume, 
when  passing  into  a  state  of  decomposition,  a  succession  of 
brilliant  colors ;  but  I  have  seen  from  six  to  eight  individuals 
of  their  number  still  alive  in  a  little  pool  beside  the  nets,  and 
still  retaining  their  original  pink  tint,  freckled  with  red.  And 
these,  I  have  observed,  as  my  shadow  fell  across  their  little 
patch  of  water,  darting  from  side  to  side  in  panic  terror  within 
the  narrow  confines,  emitting  ink  at  almost  every  dart,  until 
the  whole  pool  had  become  a  deep  solution  of  sepia.  Some 
of  my  most  interesting  recollections  of  the  cuttle-fish  are  as- 
sociated, however,  with  the  capture  and  dissection  of  a  single 
specimen.  The  creature,  in  swimming,  darts  through  the  water 
much  in  the  manner  that  a  boy  slides  down  an  ice-crusted 
declivity,  feet  foremost ; — the  lower  or  nether  extremities  gc 
first,  and  the  head  behind ;  it  follows  its  tail,  instead  of  be- 
ing followed  by  it ;  and  this  curious  peculiarity  in  its  mode 
of  progression,  though,  of  course,  on  the  whole,  the  mode 
best  adapted  to  its  conformation  and  instincts,  sometimes 
proves  fatal  to  it  in  calm  weather,  when  not  a  ripple  breaks 
upon  the  pebbles,  to  warn  that  the  shore  is  near.  An  enemy 
appears ;  the  creature  ejects  its  cloud  of  ink,  like  a  sharp 
shooter  discharging  his  rifle  ere  he  retreats ;  and  then,  darting 
away,  tail  foremost,  nnder  cover  of  the  cloud,  it  grounds  it- 
self high  upon  the  beach,  and  perishes  there.  I  was  walking, 
one  very  calm  day,  along  the  Cromarty  shore,  a  little  to  the 
west  of  the  town,  when  I  heard  a  peculiar  sound, — a  squelch, 
if  I  may  employ  such  a  word, — and  saw  that  a  large  loligo, 
fully  a  foot  and  a  half  in  length,  had  thrown  itself  high  and 
dry  upon  the  beach.  I  laid  hold  of  it  by  its  sheath  or  sack  ; 
and  the  loligo,  in  turn,  laid  hold  of  the  pebbles,  apparently  to 
render  its  abduction  as  difficult  as  possible,  just  as  I  have 
seen  a  boy,  when  borne  off  against  his  will  by  a  stronger  than 


OR,    THE   STORY   OF   MY   EDUCATION.  447 

himself,  grasping  fast  to  door-posts  and  furniture.  The  pebbles 
were  hard  and  smooth,  but  the  creature  raised  them  very  readi- 
ly with  its  suckers.  I  subjected  one  of  my  hands  to  its  grasp, 
and  it  seized  fast  hold  ;  but  though  the  suckers  were  still  em- 
ployed,  it  made  use  of  them  on  a  different  principle.  Around 
the  circular  rim  of  each  there  is  a  fringe  of  minute  thorns, 
hooked  somewhat  like  those  of  the  wild  rose.  In  clinging  to 
the  hard  polished  pebbles,  these  were  overlapped  by  a  fleshy 
membrane,  much  in  the  manner  that  the  cushions  of  a  cat' 
paw  overlap  its  claws  when  the  animal  is  in  a  state  of  tran 
quillity  ;  and  by  means  of  the  projecting  membrane,  the  hol- 
low interior  was  rendered  air-tight,  and  the  vacuum  complet- 
ed :  but  in  dealing  with  the  hand — a  soft  substance — the  thorns 
were  laid  bare,  like  the  claws  of  the  cat  when  stretched  out  in 
anger,  and  at  least  a  thousand  minute  prickles  were  fixed  in 
the  skin  at  once.  They  failed  to  penetrate  it,  for  they  were 
short,  and  individually  not  strong ;  but,  acting  together  by 
hundreds,  they  took  at  least  a  very  firm  hold. 

What  follows  may  be  deemed  barbarous ;  but  the  men  who 
gulp  down  at  a  sitting  half  a-hundred  live  oysters  to  gratify 
their  taste,  may  surely  forgive  me  the  destruction  of  a  single 
mollusc  to  gratify  my  curiosity  !  I  cut  open  the  sack  of  the 
creature  with  a  sharp  penknife,  and  laid  bare  the  viscera. 
What  a  sight  for  Harvey,  when  prosecuting,  in  the  earlier 
stages,  his  grand  discovery  of  the  circulation  !  There,  in  the 
centre,  was  the  yellow  muscular  heart,  propelling  into  the  tran- 
sparent, tubular  arteries,  the  yellow  blood.  Beat — beat — beat : 
— I  could  see  the  whole  as  in  a  glass  model ;  and  all  I  lacked 
were  powers  of  vision  nice  enough  to  enable  me  to  detect  the 
fluid  passing  through  the  minuter  arterial  branches,  and  then 
returning  by  the  veins  to  the  two  other  hearts  of  the  creature ; 
for,  strange  to  say,  it  is  furnished  with  three.  There  in  the 
midst  I  saw  the  yellow  heart,  and,  lying  altogether  detached 
from  it,  two  other  deep-colored  hearts  at  the  sides.  I  cut 
a  little  deeper.  There  was  the  gizzard-like  stomach,  filled 
with  fragments  of  minute  mussel  and  crab  shells  ;  and  there, 
inserted  in  the  spongy,  conical,  yellowish-colored  liver,  and 


448  MY  SCHOOLS   ANP  SCHOOLMASTERS 


somewhat  resembling  in  form  a  Florence  flask,  was  the  ink-Lag 
distended,  with  its  deep  dark  sepia, — the  identical  pigment  sold 
under  that  name  in  our  color-shops,  and  so  extensively  used 
in  landscape  drawing  by  the  limner.  I  then  dissected  and  laid 
open  the  circular  or  ring-like  brain  that  surrounds  the  crea- 
ture's parrot-like  beak,  as  if  its  thinking  part  had  no  other 
vocation  than  simply  to  take  care  of  the  mouth  and  its  perti- 
nents,— almost  the  sole  employment,  however,  of  not  a  few 
brains  of  a  considerably  higher  order.  I  next  laid  open  the 
huge  eyes.  They  were  curious  organs,  more  simple  in  their 
structure  than  those  of  the  true  fishes,  but  admirably  adapted, 
I  doubt  not,  for  the  purpose  of  seeing.  A  camera  obscura  may 
be  described  as  consisting  of  two  parts, — a  lens  in  front  and 
a  darkened  chamber  behind ;  but  in  the  eyes  of  fishes,  as  in 
the  brute  and  human  eye,  we  find  a  third  part  added  :  there 
is  a  lens  in  the  middle,  a  darkened  chamber  behind,  and  a 
lighted  chamber,  or  rather  vestibule,  in  front.  Now,  this 
lighted  vestibule — the  cornea — is  wanting  in  the  eye  of  the 
cuttle-fish.  The  lens  is  placed  in  front,  and  the  darkened 
chamber  behind.  The  construction  of  the  organ  is  that  of  a 
common  camera  obscura.  I  found  something  worthy  of  re- 
mark, too,  in  the  peculiar  style  in  which  the  chamber  is  dark- 
ened. In  the  higher  animals  it  may  be  described  as  a  cham- 
ber hung  with  black  velvet, — the  pigmentum  nigrum  which 
covers  it  is  of  the  deepest  black ;  but  in  the  cuttle-fish  it  is  a 
chamber  hung  with  velvet,  not  of  a  black,  but  of  a  dark  pur- 
ple hue, — the  pigmentum  nigrum  is  of  a  purplish  red  color. 
There  is  something  interesting  in  marking  this  first  departure 
from  an  invariable  condition  of  eyes  of  the  more  perfect  struc- 
ture, and  in  then  tracing  the  peculiarity  downwards  through 
almost  every  shade  of  color,  to  the  emerald-like  eye-specks  of 
the  pecten,  and  the  still  more  rudimentary  red  eye-specks  of 
the  star-fish.  After  examining  the  eyes,  I  next  laid  open,  in 
all  its  length,  from  the  neck  to  the  point  of  the  sack,  the  dorsal 
bone  of  the  creature, — its  internal  shell,  I  should  rather  say, 
for  bone  it  has  none.  The  form  of  the  shell  in  this  species  is 
that  of  a  feather,  equally  developed  in  the  web  on  both  sides. 


OR,    THE   STORY    OF   MY   EDUCATION.  449 

It  gives  rigtdity  to  the  body,  and  furnishes  the  muscles  with 
a  fulcrum;  and  we  find  it  composed,  like  all  other  shells,  of  a 
mixture  of  animal  matter  and  carbonate  of  lime.  Such  was 
the  lesson  taught  me  in  a  single  walk  ;  and  I  have  recorded  it 
at  some  length.  The  subject  of  it,  the  loligo,  has  been  described 
by  some  of  our  most  distinguished  naturalists,  such  as  Kirby 
in  his  Bridgewater  Treatise,  as  "  one  of  the  most  wonderful 
works  of  the  Creator ;"  and  the  reader  will  perhaps  remembei 
how  fraught  with  importance  to  natural  science  an  inciden 
similar  to  the  one  related  proved  in  the  life  of  the  youthful 
Cuvier.  It  was  when  passing  his  twenty-second  y  ear  on  the  sea- 
coast,  near  Fiquainville,  that  this  greatest  of  modern  naturalists 
was  led,  by  finding  a  cuttle-fish  stranded  on  the  beach,  which 
he  afterwards  dissected,  to  study  the  anatomy  and  character  of 
the  mollusca.  To  me,  however,  the  lesson  served  merely  to 
vivify  the  dead  deposits  of  the  Oolitic  system,  as  represented 
by  the  Lias  of  Cromarty  and  Ross.  The  middle  and  later  ages 
of  the  great  secondary  division  were  peculiarly  ages  of  the  Ce- 
phalopodous  molluscs  :  their  belemnites,  ammonites,  nautili, 
baculites,  hamites,  turrilites^  and  scaphites,  belonged  to  the 
great  natural  class — singularly  rich  in  its  extinct  orders  and 
genera,  though  comparatively  poor  in  its  existing  ones — which 
we  find  represented  by  the  cuttle-fish  ;  and  when  engaged  in 
disinterring  the  remains  of  the  earlier-born  members  of  the 
family — ammonites,  belemnites,  and  nautili — from  amid  the 
shades  of  Eathie  or  the  mud  stones  of  Shandwick,  the  incident 
of  the  loligo  has  enabled  me  to  conceive  of  them,  not  as  mere 
dead  remains,  but  as  the  living  inhabitants  of  primaeval  seas, 
stirred  by  the  diurnal  tides,  and  lighted  up  by  the  sun. 

When  pursuing  my  researches  amid  the  deposits  of  the  Lias, 
I  was  conducted  to  an  interesting  discovery.  There  are  two 
great  systems  of  hills  in  the  north  of  Scotland. — an  older  and 
a  newer, — that  bisect  each  other  like  the  furrows  of  a  field  that 
had  first  been  ploughed  across  and  then  diagonally.  The  dia- 
gonal furrows,  as  the  last  drawn,  are  still  very  entire.  The  great 
Caledonian  Valley,  open  from  sea  to  sea,  is  the  most  remark- 
able of  these;  but  the  parallel  valleys  of  the  Nairn,  of  the 


450 

Findhorn,  and  of  the  Spey,  are  all  well-defined  furrows ;  nol 
are  the  mountain  ridges  which  separate  them  less  definitely 
ranged  in  continuous  lines.  The  ridges  and  furrows  of  the 
earlier  ploughing  are,  on  the  contrary,  as  might  be  anticipated, 
broken  and  interrupted :  the  effacing  plough  has  passed  over 
them  ;  and  yet  there  are  certain  localities  in  which  we  find  the 
fragments  of  this  earlier  system  sufficiently  entire  to  form  one 
of  the  main  features  of  the  landscape.  In  passing  through 
the  upper  reaches  of  the  Moray  Frith,  and  along  the  Caledo- 
nian Valley,  the  cross  furrows  may  be  seen  branching  off  to  the 
west,  and  existing  as  the  valleys  of  Loch  Fleet,  of  the  Dornoch 
Frith,  of  the  Frith  of  Cromarty,  of  the  Bay  of  Munlochy,  of 
the  Frith  of  Beauly,  and,  as  we  enter  the  Highlands  proper,  as 
Glen  Urquhart,  Glen  Morrison,  Glen  Garry,  Loch  Arkaig,  and 
Loch  Eil.  The  diagonal  system, — represented  by  the  great 
valley  itself,  and  known  as  the  system  of  Ben  Nevis  and  the 
Ord  of  Caithness  in  our  own  country,  and,  according  to  De 
Beaumont,  as  that  of  Mount  Pilate  and  Cote  d'Or  on  the  Con- 
tinent,— was  upheaved  after  the  close  of  the  Oolitic  ages.  It 
was  not  until  at  least  the  period  of  the  Weald  that  its  "hills  had 
been  formed  and  its  mountains  brought  forth  ;"  and  in  the  line 
of  the  Moray  Frith  the  Lias  and  Oolite  lie  uptilted,  at  steep 
angles,  against  the  sides  of  its  long  ranges  of  precipice.  It  is 
not  so  easy  determining  the  age  of  the  older  system.  No  for- 
mation occurs  in  the  North  of  Scotland  between  the  Lias  and 
the  Old  Red  Sandstone  ;  the  vast  Carboniferous,  Permian, 
and  Triasic  deposits  are  represented  by  a  wide  gap ;  and  all 
*hat  can  be  said  regarding  the  older  hills  is,  that  they  disturbed 
and  bore  up  with  them  the  Old  Red  Sandstone  ;  but  that  as 
there  lay  at  their  basis,  at  the  time  of  their  upheaval,  no  more 
modern  rock  to  be  disturbed,  it  seems  impossible  definitely  to 
fix  their  era.  Neither  does  there  appear  among  their  estuaries 
or  valleys  any  trace  of  the  Oolitic  deposits.  Existing,  in  all 
probability,  during  even  the  times  of  the  Lias,  as  the  sub- 
aerial  framework  of  Oolitic  Scotland, — as  the  framework  on 
which  the  Oolitic  vegetables  grew, — no  deposit  of  the  system 
could  of  course  have  taken  place  over  them.     I  had  not  yet, 


OR,    THE   STORY   OF   MY   EDUCATION.  451 

however,  formed  any  very  definite  ideas  regarding  the  two  sys- 
tems, or  ascertained  that  they  belonged  apparently  to  a  different 
time;  and, finding  the  Lias  upheaved  against  the  steeper  sides 
of  the  Moray  Frith, — one  of  the  huge  furrows  of  the  more 
modern  system, — I  repeatedly  sought  to  find  it  uptilted  also 
against  the  shores  of  the  Cromarty  Frith, — one  of  the  furrows 
of  the  greatly  more  ancient  one.  I  had,  however,  prosecuted 
the  search  in  a  somewdiat  desultory  manner ;  and  as  a  pause 
of  a  few  days  took  place  in  my  professional  labors  in  the  au- 
tumn of  1830,  between  the  completing  of  one  piece  of  work 
and  the  commencement  of  another,  I  resolved  on  devoting  the 
time  to  a  thorough  survey  of  the  Cromarty  Frith,  in  the  hope 
of  detecting  the  Lias.  I  began  my  search  at  the  granitic  gneiss 
of  the  Hill,  and,  proceeding  westwards,  passed  in  succession, 
in  the  ascending  order,  over  the  uptilted  beds  of  the  lower 
Old  Red  Sandstone,  from  the  Great  Conglomerate  base  of  the 
system,  till  I  reached  the  middle  member  of  the  deposit,  which 
consists,  in  this  locality,  of  alternate  beds  of  limestone,  sand- 
stone, and  stratified  clay,  and  which  we  find  represented  in 
Caithness  by  the  extensively  developed  flag-stones.  And 
then,  the  rock  disappearing,  I  passed  over  a  pebbly  beach 
mottled  with  boulders  ;  and  in  a  little  bay,  not  half  a  mile 
distant  from  the  town,  I  again  found  the  rock  laid  bare. 

I  had  long  before  observed  that  the  rock  rose  to  the  surface 
in  this  little  bay ;  I  had  even  employed,  when  a  boy,  pieces 
of  its  stratified  clay  as  slate-pencil ;  but  I  had  yet  failed  mi- 
nutely to  examine  it.  I  was  now,  however,  struck  by  its  re- 
semblance, in  all  save  color,  to  the  Lias.  The  strata  lay  at 
a  low  angle:  they  were  composed  of  an  argillaceous  shale, 
and  abounded  in  limestone  nodules  ;  and,  save  that  both 
shale  and  nodules  bore,  instead  of  the  deep  liasic  gray,  an 
olivaceous  tint ;  I  might  have  almost  supposed  I  had  fallen 
on  a  continuation  of  some  of  the  Eathie  beds.  1  laid  open 
a  nodule  with  a  blow  of  the  hammer,  and  my  heart  leaped 
up  when  I  saw  that  it  enclosed  an  organism.  A  lark,  ill  de- 
fined, bituminous  mass  occupied  the  centre;  but  I  could  dis- 
tinguish what  seemed  to  be  spines  and  small  ichthyic  bones 


452  MY   SCHOOLS   AND   SCHOOLMASTERS; 

projecting  from  its  edges  ;  and  when  I  subjected  them  to  the 
scrutiny  of  the  glass,  unlike  those  mere  chance  resemblances 
which  sometimes  deceive  for  a  moment  the  eye,  the  more  dis- 
tinct and  unequivocal  did  their  forms  become.  I  laid  open  a 
second  nodule.  It  contained  a  group  of  glittering  rhomboidal 
scales,  with  a  few  cerebral  plates,  and  a  jaw  bristling  with 
teeth.  A  third  nodule  also  supplied  its  organism,  in  a  well- 
defined  ichthyolite,  covered  with  minute,  finely-striated  scales, 
and  furnished  with  a  sharp  spine  in  the  anterior  edge  of  every 
fin.  I  eagerly  wrought  on,  and  disinterred,  in  the  course  of  a 
single  tide,  specimens  enough  to  cover  a  museum  table  ;  and 
it  was  with  intense  delight  that,  as  the  ripple  of  the  advancing 
tide  was  rising  against  the  pebbles,  and  covering  up  the  ich 
thyolitic  beds,  I  carried  them  to  the  higher  slopes  of  the  beach, 
and,  seated  on  a  boulder,  began  carefully  to  examine  them  in 
detail,  with  a  common  botanist's  microscope.  But  not  a  plate, 
spine,  or  scale  could  I  detect  among  their  organisms,  identical 
with  the  ichthyic  remains  of  the  Lias.  I  had  got  amid  the 
remains  of  an  entirely  different  and  incalculably  more  ancient 
creation.  My  new-found  organisms  represented,  not  the  first, 
but  merely  the  second  age  of  vertebrate  existence  on  our 
planet ;  but  as  the  remains  of  the  earlier  age  exist  as  the  mere 
detached  teeth  and  spines  of  placoids,  which,  though  they  give 
full  evidence  of  the  existence  of  the  fishes  to  which  they  be- 
long, throw  scarce  any  light  on  their  structure,  it  is  from  the 
ganoids  of  the  second  age  that  the  palaeontologist  can  with 
certainty  know  under  what  peculiarities  of  form,  and  associ- 
ated with  varieties  of  mechanism,  vertebral  life  existed  in  the 
earlier  ages  of  the  world.  In  my  new-found  deposit, — to 
which  I  soon  added,  however,  within  the  limits  of  the  parish, 
some  six  or  eight  deposits  more,  all  charged  with  the  same 
ichthyic  remains, — I  found  I  had  work  enough  before  me  for 
the  patient  study  of  years. 


OR,    THE   STORY   OF   MY   EDUCATION.  453 


CHAPTER  XXII 


'They  lay  aside  their  private  cares, 
To  mend  the  Kirk  and  State  affairs  ; 
They'll  talk  o'  patronage  and  priests, 
Wi'  kindling  fury  in  their  breasts  ; 
Or  tell  what  new  taxation's  comin', 
An'  t'erlie  at  the  folk  in  /.tm'ore." 

Burns. 


We  had,  as  I  have  already  stated,  no  Dissenters  in  the  parish 
of  Cromarty.  What  were  known  as  the  Haldane's  People  had 
tried  to  effect  a  lodgment  among  us  in  the  town,  but  without 
success :  in  the  course  of  several  years  they  failed  to  acquire 
more  than  six  or  eight  members ;  and  these  were  not  of  the 
more  solid  people,  but  marked  as  an  eccentric  class,  fond  of 
argument,  and  possessed  by  a  rage  for  the  novel  and  the  ex- 
treme. The  leading  teachers  of  the  party  were  a  retired  Eng- 
lish merchant  and  an  ex-blacksmith,  who,  quitting  the  forge 
in  middle  life,  had  pursued  the  ordinary  studies  to  no  very 
great  effect,  and  become  a  preacher.  And  both  were,  I  believe, 
ood  men,  but  by  no  means  prudent  missionaries.  They  said 
very  strong  things  against  the  Church  of  Scotland,  in  a  place 
vvhere  the  Church  of  Scotland  was  much  respected ;  and  it 
was  observed,  that  while  they  did  not  do  a  great  deal  to  con- 
vert the  irreligious  to  Christianity,  they  were  exceedingly 
zealous  in  their  endeavors  to  make  the  religious  Baptists. 
Much  to  my  annoyance  in  my  \ounger  days,  they  used  to 


454  MY  SCHOOLS   AND   SCHOOLMASTERS  J 

waylay  Uncle  Sandy  on  his  return  from  the  Hill,  on  evenings 
when  I  had  gone  to  get  some  lesson  from  him  regarding  sand- 
worms,  or  razor-fish,  or  the  sea-hare,  and  engage  him  in  long 
controversies  about  infant  baptism  and  Church  Establishments. 
The  matters  which  they  discussed  were  greatly  too  high  for 
me,  nor  was  I  by  any  means  an  attentive  listener;  but  I  picked 
up  enough  to  know  that  Uncle  Sandy,  though  a  man  of  slow 
speech,  held  stiffly  to  the  Establishment  scheme  of  Knox,  and 
the  defence  of  Presbyterianism  ;  and  it  did  not  requiie  any 
particularly  nice  perceptive  powers  to  observe  that  both  his 
antagonists  and  himself  used  at  times  to  get  pretty  warm,  and 
to  talk  tolerably  loud, — louder,  at  least,  than  was  at  all  neces- 
sary in  the  quiet  evening  woods.  I  remember,  too,  that  in 
urging  him  to  quit  the  National  Church  for  theirs,  they  usually 
employed  language  borrowed  from  the  Revelations ;  and  that, 
calling  his  Church  Babylon,  they  bade  him  come  out  of  her,  that 
he  might  not  be  a  partaker  of  her  plagues.  Uncle  Sandy  had 
seen  too  much  of  the  world,  and  read  and  heard  too  much  of 
controversy,  to  be  out  of  measure  shocked  by  the  phrase ;  but 
with  a  decent  farmer  of  the  parish  the  hard  words  of  the  pro- 
selytizers  did  them  a  mischief.  The  retired  merchant  had 
lrged  him  to  quit  the  Establishment ;  and  the  farmer  had  re- 
plied by  asking,  in  his  simplicity,  whether  he  thought  he  ought 
to  leave  his  Church  to  sink  in  that  way  ?  "  Yes,"  exclaimed  the 
merchant  with  great  emphasis  ;  "leave  her  to  sink  to  her  place, 
— the  lowest  hell !"  This  was  terrible :  the  decent  farmer  open- 
ed huge  eyes  at  hearing  what  he  deemed  a  bold  blasphemy. 
The  Church  of  which  the  Baptist  spoke  was,  in  Cromarty  at 
least,  the  Church  of  the  outed  Mr.  Hugh  Anderson,  who  gave 
up  his  all  in  the  time  of  the  persecution,  for  conscience'  sake; 
it  was  the  Church  of  Mr.  Gordon,  whose  ministry  had  been  s( 
signally  countenanced  during  the  period  of  the  great  revival ;  i 
was  the  Church  of  devout  Mr.  Munro,  and  of  worthy  Mr.  Smith, 
and  of  many  a  godly  elder  and  God-fearing  member  who  had 
held  by  Christ  the  Head ;  and  yet  here  was  it  denounced  as  a 
Church  whose  true  place  was  hell.  The  farmer  turned  away, 
sick  of  the  controversy ;  and  the  imprudent  speech  of  the  re« 


OR,    THE   STORY   OF   MY   EDUCATION.  455 

tired  merchant  flew  lik(  wildfire  over  the  parish.  "Surely," 
says  Bacon,  "  princes  have  need,  in  tender  matters  and  tick- 
lish times,  to  beware  what  they  say,  especially  in  those  short 
speeches  which  fly  about  like  darts,  and  are  thought  to  be 
shot  out  of  their  secret  intentions."  Princes  are,  however,  not 
the  only  men  who  would  do  well  to  be  aware  of  short  speeches. 
Th^.  short  speech  of  the  merchant  ruined  the  Baptist  cause  in 
Cromarty ;  and  the  two  missionaries  might,  on  its  delivery 
have  just  done,  if  they  but  knew  the  position  to  which  it  re- 
duced them,  what  they  were  content  to  do  a  few  years  after, 
— pack  up  their  movables  and  quit  the  place. 

Having  for  years  no  antagonists  to  contend  with  outside  the 
pale  of  the  Establishment,  it  was  of  course  na'ural  that  we 
should  find  opponents  within.  But  during  the  incumbency  of 
Mr.  Smith, — the  minister  of  the  parish  for  the  first  one-and- 
twenty  years  of  my  life, — even  these  were  wanting  ;  and  we 
passed  a  very  quiet  time,  undisturbed  by  controversy  of  any 
kind,  political  or  ecclesiastical.  Nor  were  the  first  few  years 
of  Mr.  Stewart's  incumbency  less  quiet.  The  Catholic  Relief 
Bill  was  a  pebble  cast  into  the  pool,  but  a  very  minute  one  ; 
and  the  ripple  which  it  raised  caused  scarce  any  agitation. 
Mr.  Stewart  did  not  see  his  way  clearly  through  all  the  dif- 
ficulties of  the  measure  :  but,  influenced  in  part  by  some  of 
his  brethren  in  the  neighborhood,  he  at  length  made  up  his 
mind  to  petition  against  it ;  and  to  his  petition,  praying  that 
no  concessions  should  be  made  to  the  Papists,  greatly  more 
than  nineteen-twentieths  of  the  male  parishioners  affixed  their 
names.  The  few  individuals  who  kept  aloof  were  chiefly 
lads  of  an  extra  liberal  turn,  devoid,  like  most  extreme  poli- 
ticians, of  the  ordinary  ecclesiastical  sympathies  of  their 
countryfolk  ;  and  as  I  cultivated  no  acquaintance  with  them, 
and  was  more  ecclesiastical  than  political  in  my  leanings, 
I  had  the  satisfaction  of  finding  myself  standing,  in  oppo- 
sition to  all  my  friends,  on  the  Catholic  Relief  measure,  in 
a  respectable  minority  of  one.  Even  Uncle  Sandy,  after 
some  little  demur,  and  an  explosion  against  the  Irish  Estab- 
lishment, set  off  and  signed  the  petition.     I  failed,  however, 


456  MY  SCHOOLS  AND   SCHOOLMASTERS; 

to  see  that  I  was  in  the  wrong.  With  the  two  great  facts  of 
the  Irish  Union  and  the  Irish  Church  before  me,  I  could  not 
petition  against  Roman  Catholic  emancipation.  I  felt,  too, 
that  were  I  myself  a  Roman  Catholic,  I  would  listen  to  no  Pro- 
testant argument  until  what  I  held  to  be  justice  had  first  been 
done  me.  I  would  have  at  once  inferred  that  a  religion  asso- 
ciated with  what  I  deemed  injustice  was  a  false,  not  a  true,  re- 
igion ;  and,  on  the  strength  of  the  inference,  would  have  re- 
jected it  without  farther  inquiry  ;  and  could  I  fail  to  believe 
that  what  I  myself  would  have  done  in  the  circumstances, 
many  Roman  Catholics  were  actually  doing]  And  believing 
I  could  defend  my  position,  which  was  certainly  not  an  obtru- 
sive one,  and  was  at  times  assailed  in  conversation  by  my 
friends,  in  a  way  that  showed,  as  I  thought,  they  did  not  un- 
derstand it,  I  sat  down  and  wrote  an  elaborate  letter  on  the 
subject,  addressed  to  the  editor  of  the  Inverness  Courier  ;  in 
which,  as  I  afterwards  found,  I  was  happy  enough  to  anticipate 
in  some  points  the  line  taken  up,  in  his  famous  emancipation 
speech,  by  a  man  wrhom  I  had  early  learned  to  recognize  as 
the  greatest  and  wisest  of  Scottish  ministers, — the  late  Dr. 
Chalmers.  On  glancing  over  my  letter,  however,  and  then 
looking  round  me  on  the  good  men  among  my  townsfolk, — 
including  my  uncle  and  my  minister, — with  whom  it  would 
have  the  effect  of  placing  me  in  more  decided  antagonism 
than  any  mere  refusal  to  sign  their  petition,  I  resolved,  in- 
stead of  dropping  it  into  the  post-office,  to  drop  it  into  the 
fire,  which  I  accordingly  did  ;  and  so  the  matter  took  end ; 
and  what  I  had  to  say  in  my  own  defence,  and  in  that  of 
emancipation,  was  in  consequence  never  said. 

This,  however,  was  but  the  mere  shadow  of  a  controversy : 
it  was  merely  a  possible  controversy,  strangled  in  the  birth. 
But  some  three  years  after,  the  parish  was  agitated  by  a 
dire  ecclesiastical  dispute,  which  set  us  altogether  by  the 
ears.  The  place  had  not  only  its  parish  church,  but  also  its 
Gaelic  chapel,  which,  though  on  the  ordinary  foundation  of  a 
chapel  of  ease,  wTas  endowed,  and  under  the  patronage  of 
the  crown.     It  had  been  built  about  sixty  years  previous,  by 


OE,   THE   STORY  OF   MY  EDUCATION.  457 

a  benevolent  proprietor  of  the  lands  of  Cromarty, — "  George 
Eoss,  the  Scotch  Agent," — whom  Junius  ironically  described 
as  the  "  trusted  friend  and  worthy  confidant  of  Lord  Mans- 
field ;"  and  who,  whatever  the  satirist  may  have  thought  of 
either,  was  in  reality  a  man  worthy  the  friendship  of  the  accom- 
plished and  philosophic  lawyer.  Cromarty,  originally  a  Low- 
land settlement,  had  had  from  the  Reformation  down  till  the 
atter  quarter  of  the  last  century  no  Gaelic  place  of  worship. 
On  the  breaking  up  of  the  feudal  system,  however,  the  High- 
landers began  to  drop  into  the  place  in  quest  of  employment ; 
and  George  Ross,  affected  by  their  uncared-for  religious  con- 
dition, built  for  them,  at  his  own  expense,  a  chapel,  and  had 
influence  enough  to  get  an  endowment  for  its  minister  from 
the  Government.  Government  retained  the  patronage  in  its 
own  hands ;  and  as  the  Highlanders  consisted  of  but  laborers 
and  farm-servants,  and  the  workers  in  a  hempen  manufactory, 
and  had  no  manner  of  influence,  their  wishes  were  not  always 
consulted  in  the  choice  of  a  minister.  About  the  time  of 
Mr.  Stewart's  appointment,  through  tta  late  Sir  Robert  Peel, 
who  had  courteously  yielded  to  the  wishes  of  the  English  con- 
gregation, the  Gaelic  people  had  got  a  minister  presented  to 
them  whom  they  would  scarcely  have  chosen  for  themselves, 
but  who  had,  notwithstanding,  popular  parts  about  him. 
Though  not  of  high  talent,  he  was  frank  and  genial,  and  vis- 
ited often,  and  conversed  much ;  and  at  length  the  Highland- 
ers came  to  regard  him  as  the  very  beau  ideal  of  a  minister. 
He  and  Mr.  Stewart  belonged  to  the  antagonist  parties  in  the 
Church.  Mr.  Stewart  took  his  place  in  the  old  Presbyterian 
section,  under  Chalmers  and  Thomson  ;  while  the  Gaelic  min- 
ister held  by  Drs.  Inglis  and  Cook  ;  and  so  thoroughly  were 
their  respective  congregations  influenced  by  their  views,  that 
at  the  Disruption  in  1843,  while  considerably  more  than  nine- 
tenths  of  the  English-speaking  parishioners  closed  their  con- 
nection with  the  State,  and  became  Free  Churchmen,  at  least 
an  equal  proportion  of  the  chapel  Highlanders  clung  to  the 
Establishment.  Curiously  enough,  however,  there  arose  a  con- 
troversy between  the  congregations  at  this  time,  in  which  each 


458 

seemed,  in  relation  to  the  general  question  at  issue,  to  take 
the  part  proper  to  the  other. 

I  do  not  think  the  English  congregation  were  in  any  de- 
gree jealous  of  the  Gaelic  one.  The  English  contained  the 
elite  of  the  place, — all  its  men  of  property  and  influence,  from 
its  merchants  and  heritors,  down  to  the  humblest  of  the  class 
that  afterwards  became  its  ten-pound  franchise-holders ;  where- 
as the  Gaelic  people  were,  as  I  have  said,  simply  poor  labor 
ers  and  weavers  ;  and  if  the  sense  of  superiority  did  at  time? 
show  itself  on  the  more  potent  side,  it  was  only  among  the 
lowlier  people  of  the  English  congregation.  When,  on  one 
occasion,  a  stranger  fell  asleep  in  the  middle  of  one  of  Mr, 
Stewart's  best  sermons,  and  snored  louder  than  was  seemly, 
an  individual  beside  him  was  heard  muttering,  in  a  low  whis- 
per, that  the  man  ought  to  be  sent  up  to  "  the  Gaelic"  for  he 
was  not  fit  to  be  among  them  ;  and  there  might  be  a  few 
other  similar  manifestations ;  but  the  parties  were  not  on  a 
sufficiently  equal  level  to  enact  the  part  of  those  rival  congre- 
gations that  are  forever  bemoaning  the  shortcomings  each  of 
the  other,  and  that  in  their  days  of  fasting  and  humiliation 
have  the  sins  of  their  neighbors  at  least  as  strongly  before 
them  as  their  own.  But  if  the  English  congregation  were  not 
jealous  of  the  Gaelic  one,  the  Gaelic  one,  as  was  perhaps  natu- 
ral in  their  circumstances,  were,  I  am  afraid,  jealous  of  the 
English  :  they  were  poor  people,  they  used  sometimes  to  say, 
but  their  souls  were  as  precious  as  those  of  richer  folk,  and  they 
were  surely  as  well  entitled  to  have  their  just  rights  as  the 
English  people, — axioms  which,  I  believe,  no  one  in  the  other 
congregation  disputed,  or  even  canvassed  at  all.  We  were  all, 
however,  roused  one  morning  to  consider  the  case,  by  learning 
that  on  the  previous  day  the  minister  of  the  Gaelic  chapel  had 
petitioned  the  Presbytery  of  the  district,  either  to  be  assign, 
ed  a  parish  within  the  bounds  of  the  parish  of  Cromarty,  or 
to  have  the  charge  erected  into  a  collegiate  one,  and  his  half 
of  it,  of  course,  rendered  co-ordinate  with  Mr.  Stewart's. 

The  English  people  were  at  once  very  angry  and  very  much 
alarmed.     A  5  the  two  congregations  were  scattered  all  over 


OR,    THE   STORY   OF   MY  EDUCATION.  459 

the  same  piece  of  territory,  it  would  be  impossible  to  ait  it  up 
into  two  parishes,  without  separating  between  a  portion  of  Mr. 
Stewart's  people  and  their  minister,  and  making  them  the 
parishioners  of  a  man  whom  they  had  not  yet  learned  to  like ; 
and,  on  the  other  hand,  by  erecting  the  charge  into  a  collegiate 
one,  the  minister  whom  they  had  not  yet  learned  to  like  would 
acquire  as  real  a  jurisdiction  over  them  as  that  possessed  by 
the  minister  of  their  choice.  Or — as  the  case  was  somewhat 
quaintly  stated  by  one  of  themselves — by  the  one  alternativ 
"  the  Gaelic  man  would  become  whole  minister  to  the  half  of 
them,  and,  by  the  other,  half  minister  to  the  whole  of  them." 
And  so  they  determined  on  making  a  vigorous  resistance.  Mr. 
Stewart  himself,  too,  liked  the  move  of  his  neighbor  the  Gae- 
lic minister  exceedingly  ill.  He  was  not  desirous,  he  said,  to 
have  a  colleague  thrust  upon  him  in  his  charge,  to  keep  him 
right  on  Moderate  principles, — a  benefit  for  which  he  had  not 
bargained  when  he  accepted  the  presentation ;  nor  yet,  as  the 
other  alternative,  did  he  wish  to  see  his  living  child,  the  parish, 
divided  into  two,  and  the  half  of  it  given  to  the  strange  claimant 
that  was  not  its  parent.  There  was  another  account,  too,  on 
which  he  disliked  the  movement :  the  two  great  parties  in  the 
Church  were  equally  represented  at  the  time  in  the  Presbytery ; 
they  had  their  three  members  apiece  ;  and  he,  of  course,  saw 
that  the  introduction  of  the  Gaelic  minister  into  it  would  have 
the  effect  of  casting  the  balance  in  favor  of  Moderatism.  And 
so,  as  both  minister  and  people  were  equally  in  earnest,  counter 
petitions  were  soon  got  up,  praying  the  Presbytery,  as  a  first 
step  in  the  process,  that  copies  of  the  Gaelic  minister's  docu- 
ment should  be  served  upon  them.  The  Presbytery  decided, 
in  terms  of  their  prayer,  that  copies  should  be  served  ;  and 
the  Gaelic  minister,  on  the  somewhat  extreme  ground  that  the 
people  had  no  right  to  appear  in  the  business  at  all,  appealed 
to  the  General  Assembly.  And  so  the  people  had  next  to  pe- 
tition that  venerable  court  in  behalf  of  what  they  deemed  their 
imperilled  rights;  wh'le  the  Gaelic  congregation,  under  the 
full  impression  that  their  overbearing  English  neighbors  were 
treating  them  "  as  if  they  had  no  souls,"  got  up  a  counter  pe 


460  MY  SCHOOLS   AND  SCHOOLMASTERS  ; 

tition,  virtually  to  the  effect  that  the  parish  might  be  eitner 
cut  in  two,  and  the  half  of  it  given  to  their  minister,  or  that 
he  might  be  at  least  made  second  minister  to  every  man  in  it. 
The  minister,  however,  finding  at  the  General  Assembly  that 
the  ecclesiastical  party  on  whose  support  he  had  relied  were 
opposed  in  toto  to  the  erecting  of  chapels  of  ease  into  regular 
charges,  and  that  the  peculiarities  of  the  case  were  such  as  to 
cut  off  all  chance  of  his  being  supported  by  their  opponents, 
fell  from  his  appeal,  and  the  case  was  never  called  in  Court. 
Some  of  our  Cromarty  fisher-folk,  who  were  staunch  on  the 
English  side,  though  they  could  not  quite  see  the  merits,  had 
rather  a  different  version  of  the  business.  "  The  Gaelic  man 
had  no  sooner  entered  the  Kirk  o'  the  General  Assembly," 
they  said,  "  than  the  maister  of  the  Assembly  rose,  and, 
speaking  very  rough,  said,  '  Ye  contrarious  rascal,  what  tak'a 
you  here]  What  are  ye  aye  troubling  that  decent  lad  Air. 
Stewart  for  1  I'm  sure  he's  no  meddlin'  wi'  you  !  Get  about 
your  business,  ye  contrarious  rascal !'  " 

I  took  an  active  part  in  this  controversy ;  wrote  petitions 
and  statements  for  my  brother  parishioners,  with  paragraphs  for 
the  local  newspapers,  and  a  long  letter  for  the  Caledonian  Mer- 
cury, in  reply  to  a  tissue  of  misrepresentation  which  appear- 
ed in  that  print,  from  the  pen  of  one  of  the  Gaelic  minister's 
legal  agents ;  and,  finally,  I  replied  to  a  pamphlet  by  the  same 
hand,  which,  though  miserable  as  a  piece  of  writing, — for  it 
resembled  no  other  composition  ever  produced,  save,  mayhap, 
a  very  badly-written  law  paper, — contained  statements  which 
I  deemed  it  necessary  to  meet.  And  such  were  my  first  at- 
tempts in  the  rough  field  of  ecclesiastical  controversy, — a  field 
into  which  inclination  would  never  have  led  me,  but  which 
has  certainly  lain  very  much  in  my  way,  and  in  which  I  have 
spent  many  a  laborious  hour.  My  first  pieces  were  rather  stiffly 
"written,  somewhat  on  the  perilous  model  of  Junius;  but  as  it 
was  hardly  possible  to  write  so  ill  as  my  opponent,  I  could  ap- 
peal to  even  his  friends  whether  it  was  quite  right  in  him  to 
call  me  illiterate  and  untaught,  in  prose  so  much  worse  than 
m)  own.     Chiefly  by  getting  the  laughers  now  and  then  on 


461 

my  side,  I  succeeded  in  making  him  angry ;  and  he  replied  to 
my  jokes  by  calling  names, — a  phrase,  by  the  way,  which,  for- 
getting his  Watts'  Hymns,  and  failing  to  consult  his  Johnson, 
he  characterized  as  not  English.  I  was,  he  said,  a  "shallow, 
pretending  ninny  ;"  an  "  impudent  illiterate  lad  ;"  "  a  fanatic," 
and  a  "  frantic  person  ;"  the  "  low  underling  of  a  faction,"  and 
"  Peter  the  Hermit ;"  and  finally,  as  the  sum  total  of  the  whole, 
he  assured  me  that  1  stood  in  his  "estimation  as  the  most  ignobk 
and  despised  in  the  whole  range  of  the  human  species."  This 
was  frightful !  but  I  not  only  outlived  it  all,  but  learned,  I  fear, 
after  in  this  way  first  tasting  blood,  to  experience  a  rather  too 
keen  delight  in  the  anger  of  an  antagonist.  I  may  add,  that 
when,  some  two  or  three  years  after  the  period  of  this  contro- 
versy, the  General  Assembly  admitted  what  were  known  as  the 
Parliamentary  ministers,  and  the  ministers  of  chapels  of  ease, 
to  a  seat  in  the  church  courts,  neither  my  townsmen  nor  my- 
self saw  aught  to  cha^enge  in  the  arrangement.  It  contained 
none  of  the  elements  which  had  provoked  our  hostility  in  the 
Cromarty  chapel  case  :  it  did  not  make  over  the  people  of  one 
minister  to  the  charge  of  another,  whom  they  would  never 
have  chosen  for  themselves ;  but,  without  encroaching  on  pop- 
ular rights,  equalized,'  on  the  Presbyterian  scheme,  the  stand- 
ing of  ministers  and  the  claims  of  congregations. 

The  next  matter  which  engaged  my  townsfolK  was  a  con- 
siderably more  serious  one.  When,  in  1831,  cholera  first 
threatened  the  shores  of  Britain,  the  Bay  of  Cromarty  was 
appointed  by  Government  one  of  the  quarantine  ports  ;  and 
we  became  familiar  with  the  sight,  at  first  deemed  sufii 
ciently  startling,  of  fleets  of  vessels  lying  in  the  upper  road- 
stead, with  the  yellow  flag  waving  from  their  mast-tops.  The 
disease,  however,  failed  to  find  its  way  ashore ;  and  when,  in 
the  summer  of  the  following  year,  it  was  introduced  into  the 
north  of  Scotland,  it  went  stalking  around  the  town  and  parish 
for  several  months,  without  visiting  either.  It  greatly  more 
than  decimated  the  villages  of  Portmahomak  and  Inver,  and 
visited  the  parishes  of  Nigg  and  Urquhart,  with  the  towns  of 
Inverness,  Nairn,  Avoch,  Dingwall,  and  Rosemarkie;  and,  in 


462 

fine,  the  quarantine  seaport  town  that  seemed  at  first  to  be  most 
in  danger  appeared  latterly  to  be  almost  the  only  place  of  any 
size  in  the  locality  exempted  from  its  ravages.  It  approached, 
however,  alarmingly  near.  The  opening  of  the  Cromarty  Frith 
is  little  more  than  a  mile  across ;  a  glass  of  the  ordinary  power 
enables  one  to  count  every  pane  in  the  windows  of  the  dwellings 
that  mottle  its  northern  shore,  and  to  distinguish  their  inhab- 
itants ;  and  yet  among  these  dwellings  cholera  was  raging  ; 
and  we  could  see,  in  at  least  one  instance,  a  dead  body  borne 
forth  by  two  persons  on  a  hand-barrow,  and  buried  in  a  neigh 
boring  sand-bank.  Stories,  too,  of  the  sad  fate  of  individuals 
wTith  whom  the  townsfolk  were  acquainted,  and  who  had  resid- 
ed in  well-known  localities,  told  among  them  with  powerful 
effect.  Such  was  the  general  panic  in  the  infected  places,  that 
the  bodies  of  the  dead  were  no  longer  carried  to  the  church- 
yard, but  huddled  up  in  solitary  holes  and  corners ;  and  the  pic- 
tures suggested  to  the  fancy,  of  familiar  faces  lying  uncoffined 
in  the  ground  beside  some  lonely  wood,  or  in  some  dark  morass 
or  heathy  moor,  were  fraught  to  many  with  a  terror  stronger 
than  that  of  death.  We  knew  that  the  corpse  of  a  young  robust 
fisherman,  who  used  occasionally  to  act  as  one  of  the  Cromarty 
ferrymen,  and  with  whose  appearance,  in  consequence,  every 
one  was  familiar,  lay  festering  in  a  sand-bank  ;  that  the  iron 
frame  of  a  brawny  blacksmith  was  decomposing  in  a  mossy  hole 
beside  a  thorn-bush;  that  half  of  the  inhabitants  of  the  little  fish- 
ing village  of  Inver  were  strewn  in  shallow  furrows  along  the 
arid  waste  which  surrounded  their  dwellings  ;  that  houses  di- 
vested of  their  tenants,  and  become  foul  dens  of  contagion,  had 
been  set  on  fire  and  burnt  to  the  ground  ;  and  that  around  the 
infected  fishing-hamlets  of  Hilton  and  Balintore  the  country- 
people  had  drawn  a  sort  of  barrier  sanitai?-e,  and  cooped  up 
within  the  limits  of  their  respective  villages  the  wretched  in- 
habitants. And  in  the  general  consternation, — a  consterna- 
tion much  more  extreme  than  that  evinced  when  the  disease 
actually  visited  the  place, — it  was  asked  by  the  townsfolk 
whether  they  ought  not,  so  long  as  the  place  remained  unin- 
fected, to  draw  a  similar  coition  round  themselves.    A  public 


463 

mooting  was  accordingly  held,  to  deliberate  on  the  best  means 
of  shutting  themselves  in ;  and  at  the  meeting  almost  all  the 
adult  male  inhabitants  attended,  with  the  exception  of  the  gen- 
tlemen in  the  commission  of  the  peace,  and  the  town  officials, 
who,  though  quite  prepared  to  wink  hard  at  our  irregularities, 
failed  to  see  that,  on  any  grounds  tenable  in  the  eye  of  the 
law,  they  themselves  could  take  a  share  in  them., 

Our  meeting  at  first  threatened  to  be  stormy.  The  extra 
Liberals,  who,  in  the  previous  ecclesiastical  struggle,  had  taken 
)art  to  a  man  with  the  Gaelic  people,  as  they  did,  in  the  sub- 
sequent church  controversy,  with  the  Court  of  Session,  began 
by  an  attack  on  the  town  Justices.  We  might  all  see  now, 
said  a  Liberal  writer  lad  who  addressed  us,  how  little  these 
people  were  our  friends.  Now  when  the  place  was  threaten- 
ed by  the  pestilence,  they  would  do  nothing  for  us ;  they 
would  not  even  so  much  as  countenance  our  meeting ;  we  saw 
there  was  not  one  of  them  present :  in  short,  they  cared  no- 
thing at  all  about  us,  or  whether  we  died  or  lived.  But  he 
and  his  friends  would  stand  by  us  to  the  last ;  nay,  while  the 
magistrates  were  evidently  afraid,  with  all  their  wealth,  to 
move  in  the  matter,  terrified,  no  doubt,  by  the  prosecutions 
for  damages  which  might  be  instituted  against  them  were  they 
to  stop  the  highways,  and  turn  back  travellers,  he  himself, 
though  far  from  rich,  would  be  our  security  against  all  legal 
processes  whatever.  This,  of  course,  was  very  noble  ;  all  the 
more  noble  from  the  circumstance  that  the  speaker  could  not, 
as  the  Gazette  informed  us,  meet  his  own  actual  liabilities  at  the 
time,  and  yet  was  fully  prepared,  notwithstanding,  to  meet  with 
all  our  possible  ones.  Up  started,  however,  almost  ere  he  had 
done  speaking,  a  friend  of  the  Justices,  and  made  so  angry  a 
speech  in  iheir  defence,  that  the  meeting  threatened  to  fall  into 
two  parties,  and  explode  in  a  squabble.  I  rose  in  the  extrem- 
ity, and,  though  unhappily  no  orator,  addressed  my  towns- 
folk in  a  few  homely  sentences.  Cholera,  I  reminded  them, 
was  too  evidently  of  neither  party  ;  and  the  magistrates  were, 
I  was  sure,  nearly  as  much  frightened  as  we  were.  But  they 
really  could  do  nothing  for  us.     In  matters  of  life  and  death, 


464  MY  SCHOOLS  AND   SCHOOLMASTERS  ; 

however,  when  laws  and  magistrates  failed  to  protect  quiet 
people,  the  people  were  justified  in  asserting  the  natural  right 
to  protect  themselves ;  ar  d,  whatever  laws  and  lawyers  might 
urge  to  the  contrary,  that  right  was  now  ours.  In  a  neighbor- 
ing county,  the  inhabitants  of  certain  infected  villages  were 
fairly  shut  up  amid  their  dwellings  by  the  countryfolk  around, 
who  could  themselves  show  a  clean  bill  of  health;  and  we,  if 
in  the  circumstances  of  these  villagers,  would  very  possibly 
be  treated  after  the  same  manner.  And  what  remained  to  us 
in  our  actual  circumstances  was  just  to  anticipate  the  process 
of  being  ourselves  bottled  in,  by  bottling  the  country  out.  The 
town,  situated  on  a  promontory,  and  approachable  at  only  a 
few  points,  could  easily  be  guarded  ;  and,  instead  of  squabbling 
about  the  merits  of  Justices  of  the  Peace, — very  likely  some- 
what Conservative  in  their  leanings, — or  of  spirited  Reformers 
who  would  like  very  well  to  be  Justices  of  the  Peace  too,  and 
would  doubtless  make  very  excellent  ones,  I  thought  it  would 
be  far  better  for  us  immediately  to  form  ourselves  into  a  De- 
fence Association,  and  proceed  to  regulate  our  watches  and  set 
our  guards.  My  short  speech  was  remarkably  well  received. 
There  was  a  poor  man  immediately  beside  me,  who  was  in 
great  dread  of  cholera,  and  who  actually  proved  one  of  its  first 
victims  in  the  place, — for  in  little  more  than  a  week  after,  he 
was  in  his  grave, — who  backed  me  by  an  especially  vigorous 
Hear,  hear ! — and  the  answering  Hear,  hears,  of  the  meeting 
bore  down  all  reply.  We  accordingly  at  once  formed  our  De- 
fence Association  ;  and  ere  midnight  our  rounds  and  stations 
were  marked  out,  and  the  watches  set.  All  power  passed  at 
once  out  of  the  hands  of  the  magistrates ;  but  the  worthy  men 
themselves  said  very  little  about  it ;  and  we  had  the  satisfac- 
tion of  knowing  that  their  families — especially  their  wives  and 
laughters — were  very  friendly  indeed  both  to  the  Association 
and  the  temporary  suspension  of  the  law,  and  that,  on  both  their 
own  account  and  ours,  they  wished  us  all  manner  of  success. 
We  kept  guard  for  several  days.  All  vagabonds  and  tramp- 
ers  were  turned  back  without  remorse ;  but  there  was  a  re- 
spectable class  of  travellers  from  whom  there  was  less  danger 


OR,    THE    STORY    OF   MY   EDUCATION.  465 

to  be  apprehended ;  and  with  these  we  found  it  someway  dif- 
ficult to  deal.  I  would  have  admitted  them  at  once  ;  but  the 
majority  of  the  Association  demurred  ; — to  do  that  world  be, 
according  to  Corporal  Trim,  to  "  set  one  man  greatly  over  the 
head  of  another  ■"  and  it  was  ultimately  agreed  that,  instead 
of  at  once  admitting  them,  they  would  be  first  brought  into  a 
wooden  building  fitted  up  for  the  purpose,  and  thoroughly  fumi- 
gated with  sulphur  and  chloride  of  lime.  I  know  not  with  whoa  >■ 
the  expedient  first  orig  nated  :  it  was  said  to  have  been  suggest 
d  by  some  medical  man  who  knew  a  great  deal  about  cholera 
And  though,  for  my  own  part,  I  could  not  see  how  the  demon  of 
the  disease  was  to  be  expelled  by  the  steam  of  a  little  sulphui 
and  chloride,  as  the  evil  spirit  in  Tobit  was  expelled  by  the 
smoke  of  the  fish's  liver,  it  seemed  to  satisfy  the  Association 
wonderfully  well ;  and  a  stranger  well  smoked  came  to  be  re- 
garded as  safe.  There  was  a  day  at  hand  which  promised  an 
unusual  amount  of  smoking.  The  agitation  of  the  Reform  Bill 
had  commenced ; — a  great  court  of  appeal  was  on  that  day  to 
hold  at  Cromarty ;  and  it  was  known  that  both  a  Whig  and 
Tory  party  from  Inverness,  in  which  cholera  was  raging  at 
the  time,  would  to  a  certainty  attend  it.  What,  it  was  asked, 
were  we  to  do  with  the  politicians, — the  formidable  bankers, 
factors,  and  lawyers  who  would  form,  we  knew,  the  Inverness 
cavalcade  ]  Individually,  the  question  seemed  to  be  asked 
under  a  sort  of  foreboding  terror  that  calculated  consequences ; 
but  when  the  Association  came  to  ask  it  collectively,  and  to 
answer  it  in  a  body,  it  was  in  a  bold  tone,  that  set  fijar  at  de- 
fiance. And  so  it  was  resolved  nem.  con.  that  the  Inverness 
politicians  should  be  smoked  like  the  others.  My  turn  to 
mount  guard  had  come  round  on  the  previous  night  at  twelve 
o'clock ;  but  I  had  calculated  on  being  off  the  station  ere  the 
Inverness  people  came  up.  Unluckily,  however,  instead  of 
being  appointed  a  simple  sentry,  I  was  made  officer  for  the 
night.  It  was  the  duty  assigned  me  to  walk  round  the  sev- 
eral posts,  and  see  that  the  various  sentinels  were  keeping  a 
smart  lookout,  which  I  did  very  faithfully  ;  but  when  the  term 
of  my  watch  had  expired  I  found  no  relieving  ollicer  coming 


466  MY  SCHOOLS   AND   SCHOOLMASTEKS  ; 

up  to  take  my  place.  The  prudent  man  appointed  on  the  oc- 
casion was,  I  feared,  tiding  over  the  coming  difficulty  in  some 
quiet  corner ;  but  I  continued  my  rounds,  maugre  the  suspi- 
cion, in  the  hope  of  his  appearance.  And  as  I  approached 
one  of  our  most  important  stations, — that  on  the  great  high- 
way which  connects  the  town  of  Cromarty  with  Restock 
Ferry,  there  was  the  Whig  portion  of  the  Inverness  cavalcade 
just  coming  up.  The  newly-appointed  sentinel  stood  aside, 
to  let  his  officer  deal  with  the  Whig  gentlemen,  as,  of  course, 
best  became  both  their  quality  and  his  official  standing.  I 
would  rather  have  been  elsewhere  ;  but  I  at  once  brought  the 
procession  to  a  stand.  A  man  of  high  spirit  and  influence,— a 
banker,  and  very  much  a  Whig, — at  once  addressed  me  with 
a  stern — "  By  what  authority,  Sir  V  By  the  authority,  I  re- 
plied, of  five  hundred  able-bodied  men  in  the  neighboring 
town,  associated  for  the  protection  of  themselves  and  their 
families.  "  Protection  against  what  ?"  "Protection  against 
the  pestilence ; — you  come  from  an  infected  place."  "  Do 
you  know  what  you  are  doing,  Sir  V  said  the  banker,  fiercely. 
"  Yes, — doing  what  the  law  cannot  do  for  us,  but  wThat  we  have 
determined  to  do  for  ourselves."  The  banker  grew  pale  with 
anger ;  and  he  was  afterwards  heard  to  say,  that  had  he  a  pistol 
at  the  time,  he  would  have  shot  upon  the  spot  the  man  who 
stopped  him  ;  but  not  having  a  pistol,  he  could  not  shoot  me ; 
and  so  I  sent  hi  in  and  his  party  away  under  an  escort,  to  be 
smoked.  And  as  they  were  somewhat  obstreperous  by  the 
wray,  and  knocked  the  hat  of  one  of  their  guards  over  his  nose, 
they  got,  in  the  fumigating  process,  as  I  was  sorry  to  learn,  a 
double  portion  of  the  sulphur  and  the  chloride ;  and  came  into 
court,  to  contend  with  the  Tories,  gasping  for  breath.  I  was 
aware  I  had  acted  on  this  occasion  a  very  foolish  part ;  I  ough4 
to  a  certainty  to  have  run  away  on  the  approach  of  the  Inver 
ness  cavalcade ;  but  the  running  away  would  have  involved,  ac- 
cording to  Rochester,  an  amount  of  moral  courage  which  I  did 
not  possess.  I  fear,  too,  I  must  admit,  that  the  rough  tones 
of  the  banker's  address  stirred  up  what  had  long  lain  quietly 
enough  in  my  veins, — some  of  the  wild  buccaneering  blood  of 


OR,    THE   STORY   OF   MY   EDUCATION.  467 

1  ohn  Feddes  and  the  old  seafaring  Millers  ;  and  so  I  weakly- 
remained  at  my  post,  and  did  what  the  Association  deemed 
my  duty.  I  trust  the  banker  did  not  recognize  me,  and  that 
now,  after  the  lapse  of  more  than  twenty  years,  he  will  be  in- 
clined to  extend  to  me  his  forgiveness.  I  take  this  late  op- 
portunity of  humbly  begging  his  pardon,  and  of  assuring  him, 
that  at  the  very  time  I  brought  him  to  bay  I  was  heartily  at 
one  with  him  in  his  politics.  But  then  my  townsfolk,  being 
much  frightened,  were  perfectly  impartial  in  smoking  Whigs 
and  Tories  all  alike  ;  and  I  could  bethink  me  of  no  eligible 
mode  of  exempting  my  friends  from  a  process  of  fumigation 
which  was,  I  dare  say,  very  unpleasant,  and  in  whose  virtues 
my  faith  was  assuredly  not  strong. 

When  engaged,  however,  in  keeping  up  our  cordon  with  ap- 
parent success,  cholera  entered  the  place  in  a  way  in  which  it 
was  impossible  we  could  have  calculated.  A  Cromarty  fish- 
erman had  died  of  the  disease  at  Wick  rather  more  than  a 
month  previous,  and  all  the  clothes  which  had  been  in  con- 
tact with  the  body  were  burnt  by  the  Wick  authorities  in  the 
open  air.  He  had,  however,  a  brother  on  the  spot,  who  had 
stealthily  appropriated  some  of  the  better  pieces  of  dress ;  and 
these  he  brought  home  with  him  in  a  chest ;  though  such  was 
the  dread  with  which  he  regarded  them,  that  for  more  than 
four  weeks  he  suffered  the  chest  to  lie  beside  him  unopened. 
At  length,  in  an  evil  hour,  the  pieces  of  dress  were  taken  out, 
and,  like  the  "  goodly  Babylonish  garment"  which  wrought 
the  destruction  of  Achan  and  the  discomfiture  of  the  camp, 
they  led,  in  the  first  instance,  to  the  death  of  the  poor  impru- 
dent fisherman,  and  to  that  of  not  a  few  of  his  townsfolk  im- 
mediately after.  He  himself  was  seized  by  cholera  on  the  fol 
lowing  day  ;  in  less  than  two  days  more  he  was  dead  and  bu- 
ried ;  and  the  disease  went  creeping  about  the  streets  and 
lanes  for  weeks  after, — here  striking  down  a  strong  man  in  the 
full  vigoi  of  middle  life, — there  shortening,  apparently  by  but 
a  few  months,  the  span  of  some  worn-out  creature,  already  on 
the  verge  of  the  grave.  The  visitation  had  its  wildly  picturesque 
accompaniments.  Pitch  and  tar  were  kept  burning  during  the 
21 


4:68  MY   SCHOOLS  AND   SCHOOLMASTERS; 

night  in  the  openings  of  the  infected  lanes ;  and  the  unsteady 
light  flickered  with  ghastly  effect  on  house  and  wall,  and  the 
flitting  figures  of  the  watchers.  By  day,  the  frequent  coffins, 
borne  to  the  grave  by  but  a  few  bearers,  and  the  frequent 
smoke  that  rose  outside  the  place  from  fires  kindled  to  con 
sume  the  clothes  of  the  infected,  had  their  sad  and  startling 
effect ;  a  migration,  too,  of  a  considerable  portion  of  the  fisher 
population  to  the  caves  of  the  hill,  in  which  they  continued 
to  reside  till  the  disease  left  the  place,  formed  a  striking  ac- 
companiment of  the  visitation  ;  and  yet,  curiously  enough,  as 
the  danger  seemed  to  increase,  the  consternation  lessened,  and 
there  was  much  less  fear  among  the  people  when  the  disease 
was  actually  ravaging  the  place,  than  when  it  was  merely 
stalking  within  sight  around  it.  We  soon  became  familiar, 
too,  with  its  direst  horrors,  and  even  learned  to  regard  them  as 
comparatively  ordinary  and  commonplace.  I  had  read,  about 
two  years  before,  the  passage  in  Southey 's  "  Colloquies1''  in  which 
Sir  Thomas  More  is  made  to  remark,  that  modern  Englishmen 
have  no  guarantee  whatever,  in  these  latter  times,  that  their 
shores  shall  not  be  visited,  as  of  old,  by  devastating  plagues. 
"  As  touching  the  pestilence,"  says  Sir  Thomas  (or  rather  the 
poet  in  his  name),  "  you  fancy  yourselves  secure  because  the 
plague  has  not  appeared  among  you  for  the  last  hundred  and 
fifty  years, — a  portion  of  time  which,  long  as  it  may  seem,  com- 
pared with  the  brief  term  of  mortal  existence,  is  as  nothing  in 
the  physical  history  of  the  globe.  The  importation  of  that 
scourge  is  as  possible  now  as  it  was  in  former  times ;  and  were 
it  once  imported,  do  you  suppose  it  would  rage  with  less  vio- 
lence among  the  crowded  population  of  your  metropolis  than  it 
did  before  the  fire?  What,"  he  adds,  "if  the  sweating  sick 
ness,  emphatically  called  the  English  disease,  were  to  show  it- 
self again  ?  Can  any  cause  be  assigned  why  it  is  not  as  likely 
to  break  out  in  the  nineteenth  century  as  in  the  fifteenth'?" 
And,  striking  as  the  passage  is,  I  remembered  perusing  it  with 
that  incredulous  feeling,  natural  to  men  in  a  quiet  time,  which 
leads  them  to  draw  so  broad  a  line  between  the  experience  of 
history,  if  of  a  comparatively  remote  age,  or  of  a  distant  place, 


OR,    THE   STORY   OF   MY   EDUCATION.  469 

and  their  own  personal  experience.  In  the  loose  sense  of  the 
sophist,  it  was  contrary  to  my  experience  that  Britain  should 
become  the  seat  of  any  such  fatal  and  widely-devastating  dis- 
ease as  used  to  ravage  it  of  old.  And  yet,  now  that  I  saw 
as  terrible  and  unwonted  an  infliction  as  either  the  plague  or 
the  sweating  sickness  decimating  our  towns  and  villages,  and 
the  terrible  scenes  described  by  De  Foe  and  Patrick  Walker 
fully  rivalled,  the  feeling  with  which  I  came  to  regard  it  was 
not  one  of  strangeness,  but  of  familiarity. 

When  thus  unsuccessfully  employed  in  keeping  watch  and 
ward  against  our  insidious  enemy,  the  Reform  Bill  for  Scot- 
land passed  the  House  of  Lords,  and  became  the  law  of  the 
land.  I  had  watched  with  interest  the  growth  of  the  popular 
element  in  the  country, — had  seen  it  gradually  strengthening 
from  the  despotic  times  of  Liverpool  and  Castlereagh,  through 
the  middle  period  of  Canning  and  Goderich,  down  till  even 
Wellington  and  Peel,  men  of  iron  as  they  were,  had  to  yield  to 
the  pressure  from  without,  and  to  repeal  first  the  Test  and  Cor- 
poration Acts,  and  next  to  carry,  against  their  own  convictions, 
their  great  Poman  Catholic  Emancipation  measure.  The 
people,  during  a  season  of  undisturbed  peace,  favorable  to  the 
growth  of  opinion,  were  becoming  more  decidedly  a  power 
in  the  country  than  they  had  ever  been  before  ;  and,  of  course, 
as  one  of  the  people,  and  in  the  belief,  too,  that  the  influence 
of  the  many  would  be  less  selfishly  exerted  than  that  of  the 
few,  I  was  pleased  that  it  should  be  so,  and  looked  forward  to 
better  days.  For  myself  personally,  I  expected  nothing.  I 
had  early  come  to  see  that  toil,  physical  or  intellectual,  was 
to  be  my  portion  throughout  life,  and  that  through  no  possi- 
ble improvement  in  the  government  of  the  country  could  I 
be  exempted  from  laboring  for  my  bread.  From  State  pat- 
ronage I  never  expected  anything,  and  I  have  received  from 
it  about  as  much  as  I  expected. 

was  employed  in  laboring  pretty  hard  for  my  bread  one 
fine  evening  in  the  summer  of  1830, — engaged  in  hewing,  with 
bare  breast  and  arms,  in  the  neighborhood  of  the  harbor  of 
Cromarty,  a  large  tombstone,  which,  on  the  following  day,  was 


470  MY   SCHOOLS   AND   SCHOOLMASTEKS ; 

to  be  carried  across  the  ferry  to  a  churchyard  on  the  opposite 
side  of  the  Frith.  A  group  of  French  fishermen,  who  had 
gathered  round  me,  were  looking  curiously  at  my  mode  of 
working,  and,  as  I  thought,  somewhat  curiously  at  myself,  as 
if  speculating  on  the  physical  powers  of  a  man  with  whom 
there  was  at  least  a  possibility  of  their  having  one  day  to  deal. 
They  formed  part  of  the  crew  of  one  of  those  powerfully 
manned  French  luggers  which  visit  our  northern  coasts  every 
year,  ostensibly  with  the  design  of  prosecuting  the  herring 
fishery,  but  which,  supported  mainly  by  large  Government 
bounties,  and  in  but  small  part  by  their  fishing  speculations, 
are  in  reality  kept  up  by  the  State  as  a  means  of  rearing  sailors 
for  the  French  navy.  Their  lugger — an  uncouth-looking  ves- 
sel, representative  rather  of  the  navigation  of  three  centuries 
ago  than  of  that  of  the  present  day — lay  stranded  in  the  har- 
bor beside  us ;  and,  their  wTork  over  for  the  day,  they  seemed 
as  quiet  and  silent  as  the  calm  evening  whose  stillness  they 
were  enjoying,  when  the  letter-carrier  of  the  place  came  up 
to  where  I  wTas  working,  and  handed  me,  all  damp  from  the 
press,  a  copy  of  the  Inverness  Courier,  which  I  owed  to  the 
kindness  of  its  editor.  I  was  at  once  attracted  by  the  heading, 
in  capitals,  of  his  leading  article, — "  Revolution  in  France — 
Flight  of  Charles  X." — and  pointed  it  out  to  the  Frenchmen. 
None  of  them  understood  English ;  but  they  could  here  and 
there  catch  the  meaning  of  the  more  important  words,  and,  ex- 
claiming "  Revolution  en  France  !  ! — Fuite  de  Charles  X.  !  /" 
— they  clustered  round  it  in  a  state  of  the  extremest  excite- 
ment, gabbling  faster  and  louder  than  thrice  as  many  English- 
men could  have  done  in  any  circumstances.  At  length,  how- 
ever, their  resolution  seemed  taken ;  curiously  enough,  their 
lugger  bore  the  name  of"  Charles  X. ;"  and  one  of  them,  lay- 
ing hold  of  a  large  lump  of  chalk,  repaired  to  the  vessel's  stern, 
and,  by  covering  over  the  white-lead  letters  with  the  chalk, 
effaced  the  royal  name.  Charles  was  virtually  declared  by 
the  little  bit  of  France  that  sailed  in  the  lugger  to  be  no 
longer  king;  and  the  incident  struck  me,  trivial  as  it  may 
seem,  as  significantly  illustrative  of  the  extreme  slightness  of 


OF   MY   EDUCATION.  471 

that  hold  which  the  rulers  of  modern  France  possess  on  the 
affections  of  their  people.  I  returned  to  my  home  as  the  even- 
ing darkened,  more  moved  by  this  unexpected  revolution  than 
by  any  other  political  event  of  my  time, — brim-full  of  hope 
for  the  cause  of  freedom  all  over  the  civilized  world,  and,  in 
especial — misled  by  a  sort  of  analogical  experience—  sanguine 
in  my  expectations  for  France.  It  had  had,  like  our  own  coun- 
try, its  first  stormy  revolution,  in  which  its  monarch  had  lost 
his  nead ;  and  then  its  Cromwell,  and  then  its  Restoration 
and  its  easy,  luxurious  king,  who,  like  Charles  II.,  had  died  in 
possession  of  the  throne,  and  who  had  been  succeeded  by  a 
weak  bigot  brother,  the  very  counterpart  of  James  II.  And 
now,  after  a  comparatively  orderly  revolution  like  that  of  1688, 
the  bigot  had  been  dethroned,  and  the  head  of  another  branch 
of  the  royal  family  had  been  called  in  to  enact  the  part  of 
William  III.  The  historical  parallel  seemed  complete  ;  and 
could  I  doubt  that  what  would  next  follow  would  be  a  long 
period  of  progressive  improvement,  in  which  the  French  peo- 
ple would  come  to  enjoy,  as  entirely  as  those  of  Britain,  a 
wrell-regulated  freedom,  under  which  revolutions  would  be 
unnecessary,  mayhap  impossible  1  Was  it  not  evident,  too, 
that  the  success  of  the  French  in  their  noble  struggle  would 
immediately  act  with  beneficial  effect  on  the  popular  cause  in 
our  own  country  and  everywhere  else,  and  greatly  quicken 
the  progress  of  reform. 

And  so  I  continued  to  watch  with  interest  the  course  of  the 
Reform  Bill,  and  was  delighted  to  see  it,  after  a  passage  sin- 
gularly stormy  and  precarious,  at  length  safely  moored  in  port. 
In  some  of  the  measures,  too,  to  which  it  subsequently  led,  I 
greatly  delighted,  especially  in  the  emancipation  of  our  negro 
slaves  in  the  colonies.  Nor  could  I  join  many  of  my  person- 
al friends  in  their  denunciation  of  that  appropriation  meas- 
ure, as  it  was  termed, — also  an  effect  of  the  altered  constitu- 
ency,— which  suppressed  the  Irish  bishopricks.  As  I  ventured 
to  tell  my  minister,  who  took  the  other  side, — if  a  Protestant 
Church  failed,  after  enjoying  for  three  hundred  years  the  bene- 
fits of  a  large  endowment,  and  every  advantage  of  position  which 


472  MY  SCHOOLS  AND  SCHOOLMASTERS; 

the  statute-book  could  confer,  to  erect  herself  into  the  Church 
of  the  many,  it  was  high  time  to  commence  dealing  with  her  in 
her  true  character, — as  the  Church  of  the  few.  At  home 
however,  within  the  narrow  precincts  of  my  native  town,  there 
were  effects  of  the  measure  which,  though  comparatively  trifl- 
ing, I  liked  considerably  worse  than  the  suppression  of  tha 
bishopricks.  It  broke  up  the  townsfolk  into  two  portions, — 
the  one  consisting  of  elderly  or  middle-aged  men,  who  had 
been  in  the  CDmmission  of  the  peace  ere  the  passing  of  the 
bill,  and  who  now,  as  it  erected  the  town  into  a  parliamentary 
burgh,  became  our  magistrates,  in  virtue  of  the  support  of  a 
majority  of  the  voters ;  and  a  younger  and  weaker,  but  clever 
and  very  active  party,  few  of  whom  were  yet  in  the  commis- 
sion of  the  peace,  and  who,  after  standing  unsuccessfully  for 
the  magistracy,  became  the  leaders  of  a  patriotic  opposition, 
which  succeeded  in  rendering  the  seat  of  justice  a  rather  un- 
easy one  in  Cromarty.  The  younger  men  were  staunch  Lib- 
erals, but  great  Moderates, — the  elder,  sound  Evangelicals,  but 
decidedly  Conservative  in  their  leanings ;  and  as  I  held  ec- 
clesiastically by  the  one  party,  and  secularly  by  the  other,  I 
found  my  position,  on  the  whole,  a  rather  anomalous  one. 
Both  parties  got  involved  in  lawsuits.  When  the  Whig  Mem 
bers  of  Parliament  for  the  county  and  burgh  came  the  way, 
they  might  be  seen  going  about  the  streets  arm-in-arm  with 
the  young  Whigs,  which  was,  of  course,  a  signal  honor ;  and 
during  the  heat  of  a  contested  election,  young  Whiggism,  to 
show  itself  grateful,  succeeded  in  running  off  with  a  Conserva- 
tive voter,  whom  it  had  caught  in  his  cups,  and  got  itself  in- 
volved in  a  lawsuit  in  consequence,  which  cost  it  several  hun- 
dred pounds.  The  Conservatives,  on  the  other  hand,  also  got 
entangled  in  an  expensive  lawsuit.  The  town  had  its  annual 
fair,  at  which  from  fifty  to  a  hundred  children  used  to  buy  gin- 
gerbread, and  which  had  held  for  many  years  at  the  eastern  end 
of  the  town  links.  Through,  however,  some  unexplained  piece 
Df  strategy  on  the  part  of  the  young  Liberals,  a  market-day  came 
round,  on  which  the  gingerbread  women  took  their  stand  on  a 
green  a  little  above  the  harbor ;  and,  of  course,  where  the  gin- 


473 

gerbread  was,  there  the  children  were  gathered  together <$  and 
the  magistrates,  astonished,  visited  the  spot  in  order  to  ascer- 
tain, if  possible,  the  philosophy  of  the  change.  They  found 
the  ground  occupied  by  a  talkative  pedlar,  who  stood  up  strong- 
ly for  the  young  Liberals  and  the  new  site ;  and  the  magis- 
trates straightway  demanded  the  production  of  his  license. 
The  pedlar  had  none.  And  so  he  was  apprehended,  and  sum- 
marily tried,  o  1  a  charge  of  contravening  the  statute  54  Geo. 
III.  cap.  71 ;  and,  being  found  guilty  of  hawking  without  a 
license,  he  was  committed  to  prison.  The  pedlar,  backed,  it 
was  understood,  by  the  young  Liberals,  raised  an  action  for 
wrongous  imprisonment ;  and,  on  the  ground  that  the  day  on 
which  he  had  sold  his  goods  was  a  fair  or  market-day,  on  which 
anybody  might  sell  anything,  the  magistrates  were  cast  in 
damages.  I  liked  the  lawsuits  very  ill,  and  held  that  the 
young  Liberals  would  have  been  more  wisely  employed  in 
making  money  by  their  shops  and  professions, — secure  that 
the  coveted  honors  would  ultimately  get  into  the  wake  of  the 
good  bank-accounts, — than  that  they  should  be  engaged  either 
in  scattering  their  own  means  in  courts  of  law,  or  in  imping- 
ing on  the  means  of  their  neighbors.  And  ultimately  I  found 
my  proper  political  position  as  a  supporter  in  all  ecclesiasti- 
cal and  municipal  matters  of  my  Conservative  townsmen,  and 
a  supporter  in  almost  all  the  national  ones  of  the  Whigs, 
whom,  however,  I  always  liked  better,  and  deemed  more  vir- 
tuous, when  they  were  out  of  office  than  when  they  were  in. 
On  one  occasion,  I  even  became  political  enough  to  stand 
for  a  councillorship.  My  friends,  chiefly  through  the  death  of 
elderly  voters  and  the  rise  of  younger  men,  few  of  whom  were 
Conservative,  felt  themselves  getting  weak  in  the  place ;  and, 
fearing  that  they  could  not  otherwise  secure  a  majority  at  the 
Council  board,  they  urged  me  to  stand  for  one  of  the  vacancies, 
which  I  accordingly  did,  and  carried  my  election  by  a  swim- 
ming majority.  And  in  duly  attending  the  first  meeting  of 
Council,  I  heard  an  eloquent  speech  from  a  gentleman  in  the 
opposition,  directed  against  the  individuals  who,  as  he  finely 
expressed  it,  "  were  wielding  the  destinies  of  his  native  town  j" 


474  MY    SCHOOLS  AND   SCHOOLMASTEPwS  : 

and  saw,  as  the  only  serious  piece  of  business  before  the  meet- 
ing, the  Councillors  clubbing  pennies  apiece,  in  order  to  de- 
fray, in  the  utter  lack  of  town  funds,  the  expense  of  a  nine- 
penny  postage.  And  then,  with,  I  fear,  a  very  inadequate 
sense  of  the  responsibilities  of  my  new  office,  I  stayed  away 
from  the  Council  board,  and  did  nothing  whatever  in  its  be- 
half, with  astonishing  perseverance  and  success,  for  three 
years  together.  And  thus  began  and  terminated  my  muni- 
cipal career, — a  career  which,  I  must  confess,  failed  to  secure 
for  me  the  thanks  of  my  constituency ;  and  then,  on  the  other 
hand,  I  am  not  aware  that  the  worthy  people  ever  seriously 
complained.  There  was  absolutely  nothing  to  do  in  the  coun- 
cilship  ;  and,  unlike  some  of  my  brother  office-bearers,  the 
requisite  nothing  I  did,  quietly  and  considerately,  and  very 
much  at  my  leisure,  without  any  unnecessary  display  of 
stump  oratory,  or  of  anything  else. 


OR,    THE   STOBY   OF   MY   EDUCATION.  475 


CHAPTER  XXIII 


"  Dayo  passed ;  an'  now  my  patient  steps 
That  maiden's  walks  attend  ; 
My  vow3  had  reach'd  that  maiden's  ear, 

Aye,  an'  she  ca'd  me  friend. 
An'  I  was  bless'd,  as  bless'd  can  be  ; 

The  fond,  daft  dreamer  Hope 
Ne'er  dream'd  o'  happier  days  than  mine, 
Or  joys  o'  ampler  scope." 

Hknrison's  Sang. 

I  used,  as  I  have  said,  to  have  occasional  visitors  when  work- 
ing in  the  churchyard.  My  minister  has  stood  beside  me  for 
hours  together,  discussing  every  sort  of  subject,  from  the  mis- 
deeds of  the  Moderate  divines, — whom  he  liked  all  the  worse 
for  being  brethren  of  his  own  cloth, — to  the  views  of  Isaac 
Taylor  on  the  corruptions  of  Christianity  or  the  possibilities 
of  the  future  state.  Strangers,  too,  occasionally  came  the  way, 
desirous  of  being  introduced  to  the  natural  curiosities  of  the 
district,  more  especially  to  its  geology ;  and  I  remember  first 
meeting  in  the  churchyard,  in  this  way,  the  late  Sir  Thomas 
Dick  Lauder ;  and  of  having  the  opportunity  afforded  me  of 
questioning,  mallet  in  hand,  the  present  distinguished  Pro- 
fessor of  Humanity  in  the  Edinburgh  University,*  respecting 

*  Professor  Pi  Hans. 


176 

the  nature  of  the  cohesive  agent  in  the  non-calcareous  sand 
stone  which  I  was  engaged  in  hewing.  I  had  sometimes  a 
different,  but  not  less  irteresting,  class  of  visitors.  The  town 
had  its  small  but  very  choice  circle  of  accomplished  intellec- 
tual ladies,  who,  earlier  in  the  century,  would  have  been  per- 
haps described  as  members  of  the  blue-stocking  sisterhood ; 
but  the  advancing  intelligence  of  the  age  had  rendered  the 
phrase  obsolete :  and  they  simply  took  their  place  as  well- 
informed,  sensible  women,  whose  acquaintance  with  the  best 
authors  was  regarded  as  in  no  degree  disqualifying  them 
from  their  proper  duties  as  wives  or  daughters.  And  my 
circle  of  acquaintance  included  the  entire  class.  I  used  to 
meet  them  at  delightful  tea-parties,  and  sometimes  borrowed 
a  day  from  my  work  to  conduct  them  through  the  picturesque 
burn  of  Eathie,  or  the  wild  scenes  of  the  Cromarty  Hill,  or 
to  introduce  them  to  the  fossiliferous  deposits  of  the  Lias  or 
the  Old  Red  Sandstone.  And  not  {infrequently  their  evening 
walks  used  to  terminate  where  I  wrought,  in  the  old  chapel 
of  St.  Regulus,  or  in  the  parish  burying -ground,  beside  a 
sweet  wooded  dell  known  as  the  "  Ladies'  Walk  j"  and  my 
labors  for  the  day  closed  in  what  I  always  very  much  relish 
ed, — a  conversation  on  the  last  good  book,  or  on  some  new 
organism,  recently  disinterred,  of  the  Secondary  or  Palaeozoic 
period. 

I  had  been  hewing,  about  this  time,  in  the  upper  part  of  my 
uncle's  garden,  and  had  just  closed  my  work  for  the  evening. 
when  I  was  visited  by  one  of  my  lady  friends,  accompanied  by 
a  stranger  lady,  who  had  come  to  see  a  curious  old  dial-stone 
which  1  had  dug  out  of  the  earth  long  before,  when  a  boy,  and 
which  had  originally  belonged  to  the  ancient  Castle-garden  of 
Cromarty.  I  was  standing  with  them  beside  the  dial,  which  I 
had  placed  in  my  uncle's  garden,  and  remarking,  that  as  it  ex- 
hibited in  its  structure  no  little  mathematical  skill,  it  had  prob- 
ably been  cut  under  the  eye  of  the  eccentric  but  accomplished 
Sir  Thomas  Urquhart ;  when  a  third  lady,  greatly  younger  than 
the  others,  and  whom  I  had  never  seen  before,  came  nurried- 
ly  tripping  down  the  garden-walk,  and,  addressing  the  other 


OR,    THE   STORY   OF   MY   EDUOA1IOX.       %     477 

two,  apparently  quit*  in  a  flurry, — "  O  come,  cc  me  away,"  she 
said,  "  I  have  been  seeking  you  ever  so  long."     "  Is  this  you, 

L V  was  the  staid  reply  :  "Why,  what  now? — you  have 

run  yourself  out  of  breath."  The  young  lady  was,  I  saw,  very 
pretty  ;  and,  though  in  her  nineteenth  year  at  the  time,  her 
light  and  somewhat  petite  figure,  and  the  waxen  clearness  of 
her  complexion,  which  resembled  rather  that  of  a  fair  child 
than  of  a  grown  woman,  made  her  look  from  three  to  four 
years  younger.  And  as  if  in  some  degree  still  a  child,  her 
two  lady  friends  seemed  to  regard  her.  She  stayed  with  them 
scarce  a  minute  ere  she  tripped  off  again ;  nor  did  I  observe 
that  she  favored  me  with  a  single  glance.  But  what  else 
could  be  expected  by  an  ungainly,  dust-besprinkled  mechanic 
in  his  shirt-sleeves,  and  with  a  leathern  apron  before  him  ? 
Nor  did  the  mechanic  expect  aught  else ;  and  when  informed 
long  after,  by  one  whose  testimony  was  conclusive  on  the 
point,  that  he  had  been  pointed  out  to  the  young  lady  by  some 
such  distinguished  name  as  "the  Cromarty  poet,"  and  that 
she  had  come  up  to  her  friends  somewhat  in  a  flurry,  simply 
that  she  might  have  a  nearer  look  of  him,  he  received  the  in- 
telligence somewhat  with  surprise.  All  the  first  interviews 
in  all  the  novels  I  ever  read  are  of  a  more  romantic  and  less 
homely  cast  than  the  special  interview  just  related  ;  but  I 
know  not  a  more  curious  one. 

Only  a  few  evenings  after,  I  met  the  same  young  lady,  in 
circumstances  of  which  the  writer  of  a  tale  might  have  made 
a  little  more.  I  was  sauntering,  just  as  the  sun  was  sinking, 
along  one  of  my  favorite  walks  on  the  Hill, — a  tree-skirted 
glade, — now  looking  out  through  the  openings  on  the  ever- 
fresh  beauties  of  the  Cromarty  Frith,  with  its  promontories 
ind  bays,  and  long  lines  of  winding  shore,  and  anon  mark- 
Jig  how  redly  the  slant  light  fell  through  intersticial  gap** 
on  pale  lichened  trunks  and  huge  boughs,  in  the  deeper  re- 
cesses of  the  wood, — when  I  found  myself  unexpectedly  in  tho 
presence  of  the  young  lady  of  the  previous  evening.  She  was 
sauntering  through  the  wood  as  leisurely  as  myself — now  and 
then  dipping  into  a  rather  bulky  volume  which  she  carried, 


478    •  MY   SCHOOLS  AND    SCHOOLMASTERS  ; 

that  had  not  in  the  least  the  look  of  a  novel,  and  which, 
as  I  subsequently  ascertained,  was  an  elaborate  essay  on  Cau- 
sation. We,  of  course,  passed  each  other  on  our  several  ways 
without  sign  of  recognition.  Quickening  her  pace,  however, 
she  was  soon  out  of  sight ;  and  I  just  thought,  on  one  or  two 
occasions  afterwards,  of  the  apparition  that  had  been  pre- 
sented as  she  passed,  as  much  in  keeping  with  the  adjuncts, 
— the  picturesque  forest  and  the  gorgeous  sunset.  It  would 
not  be  easy,  I  thought,  were  the  large  book  but  away,  to  fur- 
nish a  very  lovely  scene  with  a  more  suitable  figure.  Short- 
ly after,  I  began  to  meet  the  young  lady  at  the  charming  tea- 
parties  of  the  place.  Her  father,  a  worthy  man,  who,  from 
unfortunate  speculations  in  business,  had  met  with  severe 
losses,  was  at  this  time  several  years  dead ;  and  his  widow  had 
come  to  reside  in  Cromarty,  on  a  somewhat  limited  income, 
derived  from  property  of  her  own.  Liberally  assisted,  how- 
ever, by  relations  in  England,  she  had  been  enabled  to  send 
her  daughter  to  Edinburgh,  where  the  young  lady  received  all 
the  advantages  which  a  first-rate  education  could  confer.  By 
some  lucky  chance,  she  was  boarded,  with  a  few  other  ladies, 
all  in  early  womanhood,  in  the  family  of  Mr.  George  Thom- 
son, the  well-known  correspondent  of  Burns  ;  and  passed 
under  his  roof  some  of  her  happiest  years.  Mr.  Thomson, — 
himself  an  enthusiast  in  art, — strove  to  inoculate  the  youthful 
inmates  of  his  house  with  the  same  fervor,  and  to  develope 
whatever  seeds  of  taste  or  genius  might  be  found  in  them  ; 
and,  characterized  till  the  close  of  a  life  extended  far  beyond 
the  ordinary  term,  by  the  fine  chivalrous  manners  of  the 
thorough  gentleman  of  the  old  school,  his  influence  over  his 
young  friends  was  very  great,  and  his  endeavors,  in  at  least 
some  of  the  instances,  very  successful.  In  none,  however,  was 
he  more  so  than  in  the  case  of  the  young  lady  of  my  narra- 
tive. From  Edinburgh  she  was  sent  to  reside  with  the  friends 
in  England  to  whose  kindness  she  had  been  so  largely  indebt 
ed;  and  with  them  she  might  have  permanently  remained,  to 
enjoy  the  advantages  of  superior  position.  She  was  at  an  age, 
however,  which  rarely  occupies  itself  in  adjusting  the  balance 


OR,    THE    STORY   OF   MY   EDUCATION.  479 

of  temporal  advantage ;  and  her  only  brother  having  been  ad- 
mitted through  the  interest  of  her  friends,  as  a  pupil  into 
Christ'*  Hospital,  she  preferred  returning  to  her  widowed 
mother,  left  solitary  in  consequence,  though  with  the  prospect 
of  being  obliged  to  add  to  her  resources  by  taking  a  few  of 
the  children  of  the  town  as  day-pupils. 

Her  claim  to  take  her  place  in  the  intellectual  circle  of  the 
burgh  was  soon  recognized.  I  found  that,  misled  by  the  extreme 
youthfulness  of  her  appearance,  and  a  marked  juvenility  of 
manner,  I  had  greatly  mistaken  the  young  lady.  That  she  should 
be  accomplished  in  the  ordinary  sense  of  the  term, — that  she 
should  draw,  play,  and  sing  well, — would  be  what  I  should  have 
expected ;  but  as  I  was  not  prepared  to  find  that,  mere  girl  as 
she  seemed,  she  should  have  a  decided  turn,  not  for  the  light- 
er, but  for  the  severer  walks  of  literature,  and  should  have  al- 
ready acquired  the  ability  of  giving  expression  to  her  thoughts 
in  a  style  formed  on  the  best  English  models,  and  not  in  the 
least  like  that  of  a  young  lady.  The  original  shyness  wore 
away,  and  we  became  great  friends.  I  was  nearly  ten  years 
her  senior,  and  had  read  a  great  many  more  books  than  she , 
and,  finding  me  a  sort  of  dictionary  of  fact,  ready  of  access, 
and  with  explanatory  notes  attached,  that  became  long  or 
short  just  as  she  pleased  to  draw  them  out  by  her  queries, 
she  had,  in  the  course  of  her  amateur  studies,  frequent  occa- 
sion to  consult  me.  There  were,  she  saw,  several  ladies  of 
her  acquaintance,  who  used  occasionally  to  converse  with  me 
in  the  churchyard ;  but  in  order  to  make  assurance  doubly 
sure  respecting  the  perfect  propriety  of  such  a  proceeding  on 
her  part,  she  took  the  laudable  precaution  of  stating  the  case 
to  her  mother's  landlord,  a  thoroughly  sensible  man,  one  of 
the  magistrates  of  the  burgh,  and  an  elder  of  the  kirk  ;  and 
he  at  once  certified  that  there  was  no  lady  of  the  place  who 
might  not  converse,  without  remark,  as  often  and  as  long  as  she 
pleased,  with  me.  And  so,  fully  justified,  both  by  the  example 
of  her  friends — all  very  judicious  women,  some  of  them  only 
a  few  years  older  than  herself — and  by  the  deliberate  judg- 


480  MY  SCHOOLS  AND  SCHOOLMASTERS; 

ment  of  a  very  sensible  man,  the  magistrate  and  elder, — my 
young  lady  friend  learned  to  visit  me  in  the  churchyard,  just 
like  the  other  ladies ;  and,  latterly  at  least,  considerably  oftener 
than  any  of  them.  We  used  to  converse  on  all  manner  of 
subjects  connected  with  the  belles  lettres  and  the  philosophy 
of  mind,  with,  so  far  as  I  can  at  present  remember,  only  one 
marked  exception.  On  that  mysterious  affection  which  some- 
times springs  up  between  persons  of  the  opposite  sexes  when 
thrown  much  together, — though  occasionally  discussed  by  the 
metaphysicians,  and  much  sung  by  the  poets, — we  by  no 
chance  ever  touched.  Love  formed  the  one  solitary  subject 
which,  from  some  curious  contingency,  invariably  escaped  us. 
And  yet,  latterly  at  least,  I  had  begun  to  think  about  it  a 
good  deal.  Nature  had  not  fashioned  me  one  of  the  sort  of  peo- 
ple who  fall  in  love  at  first  sight.  I  had  even  made  up  my 
mind  to  live  a  bachelor  life,  without  being  very  much  impress- 
ed by  the  magnitude  of  the  sacrifice ;  but  I  dare  say  it  did 
mean  something,  that  in  my  solitary  walks  for  the  preceding 
fourteen  or  fifteen  years,  a  female  companion  often  walked  in 
fancy  by  my  side,  with  whom  I  exchanged  many  a  thought, 
and  gave  expression  to  many  a  feeling,  and  to  whom  I  pointed 
out  many  a  beauty  in  the  landscape,  and  communicated  many 
a  curious  fact,  and  whose  understanding  was  as  vigorous  as 
her  taste  was  faultless  and  her  feelings  exquisite.  One  of  the 
English  essayists, — the  elder  Moore, — has  drawn  a  very  per- 
fect personage  of  this  airy  character  (not,  however,  of  the  soft- 
er, but  of  the  masculine  sex),  under  the  name  of  tho.  "  maid's 
husband ;"  and  described  him  as  one  of  the  most  formidable 
rivals  that  the  ordinary  lover  of  flesh  and  blood  can  possibly 
encounter.  My  day-dream  lady — a  person  that  may  be  termed 
with  equal  propriety  the  "bachelor's  wife" — has  not  been  so 
distinctly  recognized  ;  but  she  occupies  a  large  place  in  our 
literature,  as  the  mistress  of  all  the  poets  who  ever  wrote  on 
love  without  actually  experiencing  it,  from  the  days  of  Cowley 
down  to  those  of  Henry  Kirke  White ;  and  her  presence  serves 
always  to  intimate  a  heart  capable  of  occupation,  but  still 


OR,    THE   STORY   OF  MY  EDUCATION.        .     481 

unoccupied.  I  find  the  bachelor's  wife  delicately  drawn  in 
one  of  the  posthumous  poems  of  poor  Alexander  Bethune,  as 
a  "  fair  being," — the  frequent  subject  of  his  day-dreams, — 

"  Whose  soft  voice 
Should  be  the  sweetest  music  to  his  ear, 
Awakening  all  the  chords  of  harmony; 
Whose  eye  should  speak  a  language  to  his  soul, 
More  eloquent  than  aught  which  Greece  or  Rome 
Could  boast  of  in  its  best  and  happiest  days; 
Whose  smile  should  be  his  rich  reward  for  toil ; 
Whose  pure  transparent  cheek,  when  press'd  to  his, 
Should  calm  the  fever  of  his  troubled  thoughts, 
And  woo  his  spirit  to  those  fields  Elysian, — 
The  paradise  which  strong  affection  guards." 

It  may  be  always  predicated  of  these  bachelor's  wives,  that 
they  never  very  closely  resemble  in  their  lineaments  any  living 
women  :  poor  Bethune's  would  not  have  exhibited  a  single 
feature  of  any  of  his  poor  neighbors,  the  lasses  of  Upper  Ran- 
keillour  or  Newburgh.  Were  the  case  otherwise,  the  dream 
maiden  would  be  greatly  in  danger  of  being  displaced  by  the 
real  one  whom  she  resembled  ;  and  it  was  a  most  significant 
event  which,  notwithstanding  my  inexperience,  I  learned  by- 
and-bye  to  understand,  that  about  this  time  my  old  companion, 
the  "  bachelor's  wife,"  utterly  forsook  me,  and  that  a  vision  of 
my  young  friend  took  her  place.  I  can  honestly  aver,  that  I 
?ntertained  not  a  single  hope  that  the  feeling  should  be  mu- 
tual. On  whatever  other  head  my  vanity  may  have  flatter- 
ed me,  it  certainly  never  did  so  on  the  score  of  personal  ap- 
pearance. My  personal  strength  was,  I  knew,  considerably 
above  the  average  of  that  of  my  fellows,  and  at  this  time  my 
activity  also ;  but  I  was  perfectly  conscious  that,  on  the  other 
hand,  my  good  looks  rather  fell  below  than  rose  above  the 
medial  line.  And  so,  while  I  suspected,  as  I  well  might,  that, 
as  in  the  famous  fairy  story,  "  Beauty"  had  made  a  conquest 
of  the  "  Beast,"  I  had  not  the  most  distant  expectation  that 
the  "  Beast"  would,  in  turn,  make  a  conquest  of  "  Beauty." 
My  young  friend  had,  I  knew,  several  admirers, — men  who 
were  younger  and  dressed  better,  and  who,  as  they  had  all 


482 

chosen  the  liberal  professions,  had  fairer  prospects  than  I ;  and 
as  for  the  item  of  good  looks,  had  she  set  her  affections  on 
even  the  least  likely  of  them,  I  could  have  addressed  him, 
with  perfect  sincerity,  in  the  words  of  the  old  ballad  : — 

"Nae  wonder,  nae  wonder,  Gil  Morrice, 
My  lady  lo'es  ye  weel : 
The  fairest  part  o'  my  body 
Is  blacker  than  thy  heel." 

Strange  to  say,  however,  much  about  the  time  that  I  made  my 
discovery,  my  young  friend  succeeded  in  making  a  discovery 
also  ; — the  maid's  husband  shared  on  her  part  the  same  fate 
as  the  bachelor's  wife  did  on  mine  ;  and  her  visits  to  the 
churchyard  suddenly  ceased. 

A  twelvemonth  had  passed  ere  we  succeeded  in  finding  all 
this  out ;  but  the  young  lady's  mother  had  seen  the  danger 
somewhat  earlier ;  and  deeming,  as  was  quite  right  and  prop- 
er, an  operative  mason  no  very  fitting  mate  for  her  daughter, 
my  opportunities  of  meeting  my  friend  at  conversazione  or 
tea-party  had  become  few.  I,  however,  took  my  usual  even- 
ing walk  through  the  woods  of  the  Hill ;  and  as  my  friend's 
avocations  set  her  free  at  the  same  delightful  hour,  and  as  she 
also  was  a  walker  on  the  Hill,  we  did  sometimes  meet,  and 
witness  together,  from  amid  the  deep  solitudes  of  its  bosky- 
slopes,  the  sun  sinking  behind  the  distant  Ben  Wevis.  These 
were  very  happy  evenings  ;  the  hour  we  passed  together 
always  seemed  exceedingly  short ;  but,  to  make  amends  Or 
its  briefness,  there  were  at  length  few  working  days  in  the 
milder  season  of  which  it  did  not  form  the  terminal  one  ; — 
from  the  circumstance,  of  course,  that  the  similarity  of  our 
tastes  for  natural  scenery  led  us  always  into  the  same  lonely 
walks  about  the  same  delicious  sun-set  hour.  For  months 
together,  even  during  this  second  stage  of  our  friendship,  there 
was  one  interesting  subject  on  which  we  never  talked.  At 
length,  however,  we  came  to  a  mutual  understanding.  It  was 
settled  that  we  should  remain  for  three  years  more  in  Scotland 
on  the  existing  terms  ;  and  if,  during  that  time,  there  should 
open  to  me  no  suitable  field  of  exertion  at  home,  we  should 


488 

then  quit  the  country  for  America,  and  share  together  in  a 
strange  land  whatever  fate  might  be  in  store  for  us.  My  young 
friend  was  considerably  more  sanguine  than  I.  I  had  laid 
faithfully  before  her  those  defects  of  character  which  rendered 
me  a  rather  inefficient  man-at-arms  for  contending  in  my  own 
behalf  in  the  battle  of  life.  Inured  to  labor,  and  to  the  hard- 
ships of  the  bothie  and  the  barrack,  I  believed  that  in  the 
backwoods,  where  I  would  have  to  lift  my  axe  on  great  trees, 
I  might  get  on  with  my  clearing  and  my  crops  like  most  of 
my  neighbors  ;  but  then  the  backwoods  would,  I  feared,  be 
no  place  for  her  ;  and  as  for  effectually  pushing  my  way  in  the 
long-peopled  portions  of  the  United  States,  among  one  of  the 
most  vigorous  and  energetic  races  in  the  world,  I  could  not 
see  that  I  was  in  the  least  fitted  for  that.  She,  however, 
thought  otherwise.  The  tender  passion  is  always  a  strangely 
exaggerative  one.  Lodged  in  the  male  mind,  it  gives  to  the 
object  on  which  it  rests  all  that  is  excellent  in  woman,  and  in 
the  female  mind  imparts  to  its  object  all  that  is  noble  in  man ; 
and  my  friend  had  come  to  regard  me  as  fitted  by  nature  either 
to  head  an  army  or  lead  a  college,  and  to  deem  it  one  of  the 
weaknesses  of  my  character,  that  I  myself  could  not  take  an 
equally  favorable  view.  There  was,  however,  one  profession 
of  which,  measuring  myself  as  carefully  as  I  could,  I  deemed 
myself  capable  :  I  saw  men  whom  I  regarded  as  not  my  supe- 
riors in  natural  talent,  and  even  possessed  of  no  greater  com- 
mand of  the  pen,  occupying  respectable  places  in  the  period- 
ical literature  of  the  day,  as  the  editors  of  Scotch  newspapers, 
provincial,  and  even  metropolitan,  and  deriving  from  their  la 
bors  incomes  of  from  one  to  three  hundred  pounds  per  annum 
and  were  my  abilities,  such  as  they  were,  to  be  fairly  set  bv 
sample  before  the  public,  and  so  brought  into  the  literary  mar- 
ket, they  might,  I  thought,  possibly  lead  to  my  engagement 
as  a  newspaper  editor.  And  so,  as  a  first  step  in  the  process. 
I  resolved  on  publishing  my  volume  of  traditional  history, — a 
work  on  which  I  had  bestowed  considerable  care,  and  which, 
regarded  as  a  specimen  of  what  I  could  do  as  a  litterateur, 


484 

would,  I  believed,  show  not  inadequately  my  ability  of  tieafc 
ing  at  least  those  lighter  subjects  with  which  newspaper  edi- 
tors are  occasionally  called  on  to  deal. 

Nearly  two  of  the  three  twelvemonths  passed  by,  however, 
and  I  was  still  an  operative  mason.  With  all  my  solicitude,  I 
could  not  give  myself  heartily  to  seek  work  of  the  kind  which 
I  saw  newspaper  editors  had  at  that  time  to  do.  Jt  might  be 
quite  well  enough,  I  thought,  for  the  lawyer  to  be  a  special 
pleader.  With  special  pleadings  equally  extreme  on  the  oppo- 
site sides  of  a  case,  and  a  qualified  judge  to  hold  the  balance  be- 
tween, the  cause  of  truth  and  justice  might  be  even  more  thor- 
oughly served  than  if  the  antagonist  agents  were  to  set  them- 
selves to  be  as  impartial  and  equal-handed  as  the  magistrate 
himself.  But  I  could  not  extend  the  same  tolerance  to  the  spe- 
cial pleading  of  the  newspaper  editor.  I  saw  that,  to  many  of 
the  readers  of  his  paper,  the  editor  did  not  hold  the  place  of  a 
law-agent,  but  of  a  judge  :  it  was  his  part  to  submit  to  them, 
therefore,  not  ingenious  pleadings,  but,  to  the  best  of  his  judg- 
ment, honest  decisions.  And  not  only  did  no  place  present 
itself  for  me  in  the  editorial  field,  but  I  really  could  see  no 
place  in  it  that,  with  the  views  which  I  entertained  on  this 
head,  I  would  not  scruple  to  occupy.  I  saw  no  party  cause 
for  which  I  could  honestly  plead.  My  ecclesiastical  friends 
had,  with  a  few  exceptions,  cast  themselves  into  the  Conserva- 
tive ranks,  and  there  I  could  not  follow  them.  The  Liberals, 
on  the  other  hand,  being  in  office  at  the  time,  had  become  at 
least  as  like  their  old  opponents  as  their  former  selves,  and  I 
could  by  no  means  defend  all  that  they  were  doing.  In  Radi- 
calism I  had  no  faith  ;  and  Chartism, — with  my  recollection 
of  the  kind  of  treatment  which  I  had  received  from  the  work- 
men of  the  south  still  strongly  impressed  upon  my  mind, — I 
thoroughly  detested.  And  so  I  began  seriously  to  think  of 
the  backwoods  of  America.  But  there  was  another  destiny 
in  store  for  me.  My  native  town,  up  till  this  time,  though  a 
place  of  considerable  trade,  was  unfurnished  with  a  branch 
bank ;  but  on  the  representation  of  some  of  its  more  extensive 


485 

traders,  and  of  the  proprietors  of  the  neighboring  lands,  the 
Commercial  Bank  of  Scotland  had  agreed  to  make  it  the  scene 
of  one  of  its  agencies,  and  arranged  with  a  sagacious  and  suc- 
cessful merchant  and  shipowner  of  the  place  to  act  as  its  agent. 
It  had  fixed,  too,  on  a  young  man  as  its  accountant,  at  the  sug- 
gestion of  a  neighboring  proprietor  ;  and  I  heard  of  the  pro- 
jected bank  simply  as  a  piece  of  news  of  interest  to  the  town 
and  its  neighborhood,  but,  of  course,  without  special  bearing 
on  any  concern  of  mine.  Receiving,  however,  one  winter 
morning,  an  invitation  to  breakfast  with  the  future  agent, — ■ 
Mr.  Ross, — I  was  not  a  little  surprised,  after  we  had  taken 
a  quiet  cup  of  tea  together,  and  beaten  over  half-a-dozen  sev- 
eral subjects,  to  be  offered  by  him  the  accountantship  of  the 
branch  brank.  After  a  pause  of  a  full  half-minute,  I  said 
that  the  walk  was  one  in  which  I  had  no  experience  what- 
ever,— that  even  the  little  knowledge  of  figures  which  I  had 
acquired  at  school  had  been  suffered  to  fade  and  get  dim  in 
my  mind,  from  want  of  practice, — and  that  I  feared  I  would 
make  but  a  very  indifferent  accountant.  I  shall  undertake 
for  you,  said  Mr.  Ross,  and  do  my  best  to  assist  you.  All 
you  have  to  do  at  present  is  just  to  signify  your  acceptance 
of  the  offer  made.  I  referred  to  the  young  man  who,  I  under- 
stood, had  been  already  nominated  accountant.  Mr.  Ross 
stated  that,  being  wholly  a  stranger  to  him,  and  as  the  office 
was  one  of  great  trust,  he  had,  as  the  responsible  party,  sought 
the  security  of  a  guarantee,  which  the  gentleman  who  had  rec- 
ommended the  young  man  declined  to  give  ;  and  so  his  rec- 
ommendation had  fallen  to  the  ground.  "  But  /  can  give 
you  no  guarantee,"  I  said.  "  From  you,"  rejoined  Mr.  Ross, 
'•  none  shall  ever  be  asked."  And  such  was  one  of  the  more 
special  Providences  of  my  life  ;  for  why  should  I  gi\  t  it  a 
humbler  namel 

In  a  few  days  after,  I  had  taken  leave  of  my  young  friend 
in  good  hope,  and  was  tossing  in  an  old  and  somewhat  crazy 
coasting  vessel,  on  my  way  to  the  patent  bank  at  Edinburgh, 
to  receive  there  the  instructions  necessary  to  the  branch  ac- 
countant.    I  had  wrought  as  an  operative  mason,  including 


486  MY  SCHOOLS   AND   SCHOOLMASTERS ; 

my  term  of  apprenticeship,  for  fifteen  years, — no  inconsider- 
able portion  of  the  more  active  part  of  a  man's  life ;  but 
the  time  was  not  altogether  lost.  I  enjoyed  in  these  years 
fully  the  average  amount  of  happiness,  and  learned  to  know 
more  of  the  Scottish  people  than  is  generally  known.  Let 
me  add, — for  it  seems  to  be  very  much  the  fashion  of  the 
time  to  draw  dolorous  pictures  of  the  condition  of  the  labor- 
ing classes, — that  from  the  close  of  the  first  year  in  which  I 
wrought  as  a  journeyman,  up  till  I  took  final  leave  of  the  mal 
let  and  chisel,  I  never  knew  what  it  was  to  want  a  shilling ; 
that  my  two  uncles,  my  grandfather,  and  the  mason  with 
whom  I  served  my  apprenticeship, — all  working  men, — had 
had  a  similar  experience  ;  and  that  it  was  the  experience  of 
my  father  also.  I  cannot  doubt  that  deserving  mechanics 
may,  in  exceptional  cases,  be  exposed  to  want ;  but  I  can  as 
little  doubt  that  the  cases  are  exceptional,  and  that  much 
of  the  suffering  of  the  class  is  a  consequence  either  of  im- 
providence on  the  part  of  the  competently  skilled,  or  of  a 
course  of  trifling  during  the  term  of  apprenticeship, — quite  as 
common  as  trifling  at  school, — that  always  lands  those  who 
indulge  in  it  in  the  hapless  position  of  the  inferior  workman. 
I  trust  I  may  further  add,  that  I  was  an  honest  mechanic.  It 
was  one  of  the  maxims  of  Uncle  James,  that  as  the  Jews,  re- 
stricted by  lawr  to  their  forty  stripes,  always  fell  short  of  the 
legal  number  by  one,  lest  they  should  by  any  accident  exceed 
it,  so  a  working  man,  in  order  to  balance  any  disturbing  ele- 
ment of  selfishness  in  his  disposition,  should  bring  his  charges 
for  work  done,  slightly  but  sensibly  within  what  he  deemed 
the  proper  mark,  and  so  give,  as  he  used  to  express  himself, 
his  "  customer  the  cast  of  the  baulk."  I  do  think  I  acted  up 
to  the  maxim ;  and  that,  without  injuring  my  brother  work- 
men by  lowering  their  prices,  I  never  yet  charged  an  employ- 
er for  a  piece  of  work  that,  fairly  measured  and  valued,  would 
not  be  rated  at  a  slightly  higher  sum  than  that  in  which  it 
stood  in  my  account. 

I  had  quitted  Cromarty  for  the  south  late  in  November,  and 
.anded  at  Leith  on  a  bleak  December  morning,  just  in  time 


487 

to  escape  a  tremend  yus  storm  of  wind  and  rain  from  the  wes$ 
which,  had  it  caught  the  smack  in  which  I  sailed  on  the  Frith, 
would  have  driven  us  all  back  to  Fraserburgh,  and,  as  the 
vessel  was  hardly  sea-worthy  at  the  time,  perhaps  a  great  deal 
farther.  The  passage  had  been  stormy  ;  and  a  very  noble, 
but  rather  unsocial  fellow-passenger — a  fine  specimen  of  the 
golden  eagle — had  been  sea-sick,  and  evidently  very  uncom- 
fortable, for  the  greater  part  of  the  way.  The  eagle  must  have 
oeen  accustomed  to  motion  a  great  deal  more  rapid  than 
that  of  the  vessel,  but  it  was  motion  of  a  different  kind ;  and 
so  he  fared  as  persons  do  who  never  feel  a  qualm  when  hur- 
ried along  a  railway  at  the  rate  of  forty  miles  an  hour,  but 
who  yet  get  very  squeamish  in  a  tossing  boat,  that  creeps 
through  a  rough  sea,  at  a  speed  not  exceeding,  in  the  same  pe- 
riod of  time,  from  four  to  five  knots.  The  day  preceding  the 
storm  was  leaden-hued  and  sombre,  and  so  calm,  that  though 
the  little  wind  there  was  blew  the  right  way,  it  carried  us 
on,  from  the  first  light  of  morning,  when  we  found  ourselves 
abreast  of  the  Bass,  to  only  near  Inchkeith  ;  for  when  night 
fell,  we  saw  the  May  light  twinkling  dimly  far  astern,  and 
that  of  the  Inch  rising  bright  and  high  right  ahead.  I  spent 
the  greater  part  of  the  day  on  deck,  marking,  as  they  came  into 
view,  the  various  objects, — hill,  and  island,  and  seaport  town, 
of  which  I  had  lost  sight  nearly  ten  years  before ;  feeling,  the 
while,  not  without  some  craven  shrinkings,  that,  having  got  to 
the  end,  in  the  journey  of  life,  of  one  very  definite  stage,  with 
its  peculiar  scenery  and  sets  of  objects,  1  was  just  on  the  eve 
of  entering  upon  another  stage,  in  which  the  scenery  and  ob- 
jects would  be  all  unfamiliar  and  new.  I  was  now  two  years 
turned  of  thirty  ;  and  though  I  could  not  hold  that  any  very 
great  amount  of  natural  endowment  was  essentially  necessary 
to  the  bank  accountant,  I  knew  that  most  men  turned  of  thirty 
might  in  vain  attempt  acquiring  the  ability  even  of  heading  a 
pin  with  the  necessary  adroitness,  and  that  I  might  fail,  on  the 
same  principle,  to  pass  muster  as  an  accountant.  I  deter- 
mined, however,  obstinately  to  set  myself  to  acquire,  whatever 
might  U  the  result ;  and  entered  Edinburgh  in  something  like 


488  MY  SCHOOLS  AND  SCHOOLMASTERS; 

spirits  on  the  strength  of  the  resolution.  I  had  transmitted 
the  manuscript  of  my  legendary  work,  several  months  before, 
to  Sir  Thomas  Dick  Lauder ;  and  as  he  was  now  on  terms,  in 
its  behalf,  with  Mr.  Adam  Black,  the  well-known  publisher,  I 
took  the  liberty  of  waiting  on  him,  to  see  how  the  negotiation 
was  speeding.  He  received  me  with  great  kindness ;  hospit- 
ably urged  that  I  should  live  with  him  so  long  as  I  resided  in 
Edinburgh,  in  his  noble  mansion,  the  Grange  House  ;  and,  as 
an  inducement,  introduced  me  to  his  library,  full  charged  with 
the  best  editions  of  the  best  authors,  and  enriched  with  many 
a  rare  volume  and  curious  manuscript.  "  Here,"  he  said,  "  Rob- 
ertson the  historian  penned  his  last  work, — the  Disquisition  ; 
and  here,"  opening  the  door  of  an  adjoining  room,  "  he  died." 
I,  of  course,  declined  the  invitation.  The  Grange  House,  with 
its  books,  and  its  pictures,  and  its  hospitable  master,  so  rich 
in  anecdote,  and  so  full  of  the  literary  sympathies,  would  have 
been  no  place  for  a  poor  pupil-accountant,  too  sure  that  he 
was  to  be  stupid,  but  not  the  less  determined  on  being  busy. 
Besides,  on  calling  immediately  after  at  the  bank,  I  found  that 
I  would  have  to  quit  Edinburgh  on  the  morrow  for  some 
country  agency,  in  which  I  might  be  initiated  into  the  system 
of  book-keeping  proper  to  a  branch  bank,  and  where  the  busi- 
ness transacted  would  be  of  a  kind  similar  to  what  might  be 
expected  in  Cromarty.  Sir  Thomas,  however,  kindly  got  Mr. 
Black  to  meet  me  at  dinner  ;  and,  in  the  course  of  the  even- 
ing, that  enterprising  bookseller  agreed  to  undertake  the  pub- 
lication of  my  work,  on  terms  which  the  nameless  author  of 
a  volume  somewhat  local  in  its  character,  and  very  local  in 
its  name,  might  well  regard  as  liberal. 

Linlithgow  was  the  place  fixed  on  by  the  parent  bank  as 
the  scene  of  my  initiation  into  the  mysteries  of  branch  bank- 
ing ;  and,  taking  my  passage  in  one  of  the  track-boats  which 
at  that  time  plied  on  the  Canal  between  Edinburgh  and  Glas- 
gow, I  reached  the  fine  old  burgh  as  the  brief  winter  day  was 
coming  to  a  close,  and  was  seated  next  morning  at  my  desk,  not 
a  hundred  yards  from  the  spot  on  which  Hamilton  of  Bothwell- 
haugh  had  taken  his  stand  when  he  shot  the  good  Regent.     I 


OR,    THE   STORY   OF   MY   EDUCATION.  489 

was,  as  I  had  anticipated,  very  stupid ;  and  must  have  looked, 
I  suppose,  even  more  obtuse  than  I  actually  was ;  for  my  tem- 
porary superioi  the  agent,  having  gone  to  Edinburgh  a  few  days 
after  my  arrival,  gave  expression,  in  the  head  bank,  to  the  con- 
viction that  it  would  be  in  vain  attempting  making  "  yon  man" 
an  accountant.  Altogether  deficient  in  the  cleverness  that  can 
promptly  master  isolated  details,  when  in  ignorance  of  their 
bearing  on  the  general  scheme  to  w  hich  they  belong,  I  could  lit- 
erally do  nothing  until  I  had  got  a  hold  of  the  system ;  which, 
ocked  up  in  the  ponderous  tomes  of  the  agency,  for  some  little 
time  eluded  my  grasp.  At  length,  however,  it  gradually  un- 
rolled itself  before  me,  in  all  its  nice  proportions,  as  one  of 
perhaps  the  completest  forms  of  "  book-keeping"  which  the  wit 
of  man  has  yet  devised ;  and  I  then  found  that  the  details 
which,  when  I  had  approached  them  as  if  from  the  outside, 
had  repulsed  and  beaten  me  back,  could,  like  the  outworks 
of  a  fortress,  be  commanded  from  the  centre  with  the  utmost 
ease.  Just  as  I  had  reached  this  stage,  the  regular  accountant. 
of  the  branch  was  called  away  to  an  appointment  in  one  of 
the  joint  stock  banks  of  England  ;  and  the  agent,  again  going 
into  Edinburgh  on  business,  left  me  for  the  greater  part  of  a 
day  in  direction  of  the  agency.  Little  more  than  a  fortnight 
had  elapsed  since  he  had  given  his  unfavorable  verdict ;  and 
he  was  now  asked  how,  in  the  absence  of  the  accountant,  he 
could  have  got  awray  from  his  charge.  He  had  left  me  in  the 
office,  he  said.  What!  the  Incompetent?  O,  that,  he  replied, 
is  all  a  mistake ;  the  Incompetent  has  already  mastered  our 
system.  The  mechanical  ability,  however,  came  but  slowly  ; 
and  I  never  acquired  the  facility,  in  running  up  columns  of 
summations,  of  the  early  taught  accountant ;  though,  making 
up  by  diligence  what  I  wanted  in  speed,  I  found,  after  my 
first  few  weeks  of  labor  in  Linlithgow,  that  I  could  give,  as 
of  old,  an  occasional  hour  to  literature  and  geology.  The 
proof-sheets  of  my  book  began  to  drop  in  upon  me,  demanding 
revision  ;  and  to  a  quarry  in  the  neighborhood  of  the  town, 
rich  in  the  organisms  of  the  Mountain  Limestone,  and  over- 
flown by  a  bed  of  basalt  so  regularly  columnar,  that  one  of  tho 


490  MY   SCHOOLS  AKD 

legends  of  the  district  attributed  its  formation  to  the  "  ancient 
Pechts,"  I  was  able  to  devote,  not  without  profit,  the  even 
ings  of  several  Saturdays.  I  formed,  -at  this  time,  my  first 
acquaintance  with  the  Palaeozoic  shells,  as  they  occur  in  the 
rock, — an  acquaintance  which  has  since  been  extended  in  some 
measure  through  the  Silurian  deposits,  Upper  and  Lower ;  and 
these  shells,  though  marked,  in  the  immensely  extended  ages 
of  the  division  to  which  they  belong,  by  specific,  and  even 
generic  variety,  I  have  found  exhibiting  throughout  a  unique 
family  type  or  pattern,  as  entirely  different  from  the  family 
type  of  the  Secondary  shells  as  both  are  different  from  the 
family  types  of  the  Tertiary  and  the  existing  ones.  Each  of 
the  three  great  periods  of  creation  had  its  own  peculiar  fash- 
ion ;  and  after  having  acquainted  myself  with  the  fashions  of 
the  second  and  third  periods,  I  was  now  peculiarly  interest- 
ed in  the  acquaintance  which  I  was  enabled  to  commence 
with  that  of  the  first  and  earliest  also.  I  found,  too,  in  a  bed 
of  trap  beside  the  Edinburgh  road,  scarce  half  a  mile  to  the 
east  of  the  town,  numerous  pieces  of  carbonized  lignite,  which 
still  retained  the  woody  structure, — probably  the  broken  re- 
mains of  some  forest  of  the  Carboniferous  period,  enveloped 
in  some  ancient  lava  bed,  that  had  rolled  over  its  shrubs  and 
trees,  annihilating  all  save  the  fragments  of  charcoal,  which, 
locked  up  in  its  viscid  recesses,  had  resisted  the  agency  that  dis- 
sipated the  more  exposed  embers  into  gas.  I  had  found,  in  like 
manner,  when  residing  at  Conon-side  and  Inverness,  fragments 
of  charcoal  locked  up  in  the  glassy  vesicular  stone  of  the  old 
vitrified  forts  of  Craig  Phadrig  and  Knock  Farril,  and  existing 
as  the  sole  representatives  of  the  vast  masses  of  fuel  which  must 
have  been  employed  in  fusing  the  ponderous  walls  ^f  these 
unique  fortalices.  And  I  was  now  interested  to  find  exactly 
the  same  phenomena  among  the  vitrified  rocks  of  the  Coa 
Measures.  Brief  as  the  days  were,  I  had  always  a  twilight 
hour  to  myself  in  Linlithgow  ;  and  as  the  evenings  were  fine 
for  the  season,  the  old  Royal  Park  of  the  place,  with  its  noble 
church,  its  massive  palace,  and  its  sweet  lake,  still  mottled 
by  the  hereditary  swans  whose  progenitors  had  sailed  over  its 


OR,    THE   STORY   OF   MY   EDUCATION.  491 

waters  in  the  days  when  James  IV.  worshipped  in  the  spectre 
aisle,  formed  a  delightful  place  of  retreat,  little  frequented  by 
the  inhabitants  of  the  town,  but  only  all  the  more  my  own 
in  consequence ;  and  in  which  I  used  to  feel  the  fatigue  of 
the  day's  figuring  and  calculation  drop  away  into  the  cool 
breezy  air,  like  cobwebs  from  an  unfolded  banner,  as  I  climb- 
ed among  the  ruins,  or  sauntered  along  the  glassy  shores  of 
the  loch.  My  stay  at  Linlithgow  was  somewhat  prolonged, 
by  the  removal,  first,  of  the  accountant  of  the  branch,  and  then 
of  its  agent,  who  was  called  south  to  undertake  the  manage- 
ment of  a  newly-erected  English  bank  ;  but  I  lost  nothing  by 
the  delay.  An  admirable  man  of  business,  one  of  the  offi- 
cials of  the  parent  bank  in  Edinburgh  (now  its  agent  in  Kir- 
caldy.  and  recently  provost  of  the  place),  was  sent  temporari- 
ly to  conduct  the  business  of  the  agency  ;  and  I  saw,  under 
him,  how  a  comparative  stranger  arrived  at  his  conclusions  re- 
specting the  standing  and  solvency  of  the  various  customers 
with  whom,  in  behalf  of  the  parent  institute,  he  was  called  on 
to  deal.  And,  finally,  my  brief  term  of  apprenticeship  ex- 
pired,— about  two  months  in  all, — I  returned  to  Cromarty ; 
and,  as  the  opening  of  the  agency  there  waited  only  my  ar- 
rival, straightway  commenced  my  new  course  as  an  account- 
ant. My  minister,  when  he  first  saw  me  seated  at  the  desk, 
pronounced  me  "  at  length  fairly  caught ;"  and  I  must  confess 
I  did  feel  as  if  my  latter  days  were  destined  to  differ  from  my 
earlier  ones,  well  nigh  as  much  as  those  of  Peter  of  old,  who, 
when  he  was  "  young,  girded  himself,  and  walked  whither  he 
would,  but  who,  when  old,  was  girded  by  others,  and  carried 
whither  he  would  not." 

Two  long  years  had  to  pass  from  this  time  ere  my  young 
friend  and  I  could  be  united, — for  such  were  the  terms  on 
m  hich  -we  had  to  secure  the  consent  of  her  mother  ;  but, 
with  our  union  in  the  vista,  we  could  meet  more  freely  than 
before ;  and  the  time  passed  not  unpleasantly  away.  For 
the  first  six  months  of  my  new  employment,  I  found  myself 
unable  to  make  my  old  use  of  the  leisure  hours  which,  I 
found.  I  could  still  command.     There  was  nothing  verv  ill- 


's  /eiT 
22 


492 

tellectual,  in  the  higher  sense  of  the  term,  in  recording  the 
bank's  transactions,  or  in  summing  up  columns  of  figures,  or 
in  doing  business  over  the  counter ;  and  yet  the  fatigue  induced 
was  a  fatigue,  not  of  sinew  and  muscle,  but  of  nerve  and  brain, 
which,  if  it  did  not  quite  disqualify  me  for  my  former  intel 
lectual  amusements,  at  least  greatly  disinclined  me  towards 
them,  and  rendered  me  a  considerably  more  indolent  sort  of 
person  than  either  before  or  since.  It  is  asserted  by  artists  of 
discriminating  eye,  that  the  human  hand  bears  an  expression 
stamped  upon  it  by  the  general  character,  as  surely  as  the  hu- 
man face :  and  I  certainly  used  to  be  struck,  during  this  tran- 
sition period,  by  the  relaxed  and  idle  expression  that  had  on 
the  sudden  been  assumed  by  mine.  And  the  slackened  hands 
represented,  I  too  surely  felt,  a  slackened  mind.  The  unin 
tellectual  toils  of  the  laboring  man  have  been  occasionally 
represented  as  less  favorable  to  mental  cultivation  than  the 
semi-intellectual  employments  of  that  class  immediately  above 
him,  to  which  our  clerks,  shopmen,  and  humbler  accountants 
belong ;  but  it  will  be  found  that  exactly  the  reverse  is  the 
case,  and  that,  though  a  certain  conventional  gentility  of  man- 
ner and  appearance  on  the  side  of  the  somewhat  higher  class 
may  serve  to  conceal  the  fact,  it  is  on  the  part  of  the  labor- 
ing man  that  the  real  advantage  lies.  The  mercantile  account- 
ant or  law-clerk,  bent  over  his  desk,  his  faculties  concentrat- 
ed on  his  columns  of  figures,  or  on  the  pages  which  he  has 
been  carefully  engrossing,  and  unable  to  proceed  one  step  in 
his  work  without  devoting  to  it  all  his  attention,  is  in  greatly 
less  favorable  circumstances  than  the  ploughman  or  operative 
mechanic,  whose  mind  is  free  though  his  body  labors,  and  who 
thus  finds,  in  the  very  rudeness  of  his  employments,  a  com- 
pensation for  their  humble  and  laborious  character.  And  it 
will  be  found  that  the  humbler  of  the  two  classes  is  much  more 
largely  represented  in  our  literature  than  the  class  by  one  degree 
less  humble.  Ranged  against  the  poor  clerk  of  Nottingham, 
Henry  Kirke  White,  and  the  still  more  hapless  Edinburgh  en- 
grossing clerk,  Robert  Ferguson,  with  a  very  few  others,  we  find 
in  our  literature  a  numerous  and  vigorous  phalanx,  composed 


OR,   THE   STORY   OF   MY   EDUCATION.  493 

of  men  such  as  the  Ayrshire  Ploughman,  the  Ettrick  Shepherd, 
the  Fifeshire  Foresters,  the  sailors  Dampier  and  Falconer, — 
Bunyan,  Bloomfield,  Ramsay,  Tannahill,  Alexander  Wilson, 
John  Clare,  Allan  Cunningham,  and  Ebenezer  Elliott.  And  I 
wa?  taught  at  this  time  to  recognize  the  simple  principle  on 
which  the  greater  advantages  lie  on  the  side  of  the  humbler 
6lass.  Gradually,  however,  as  I  became  more  inured  to  a  se- 
dentary life,  my  mind  recovered  its  spring,  and  my  old  ability 
returned  of  employing  my  leisure  hours,  as  before,  in  intellec- 
tual exertion.  Meanwhile  my  legendary  volume  issued  from 
the  press,  and  was,  with  a  few  exceptions,  very  favorably  re- 
ceived by  the  critics.  Leigh  Hunt  gave  it  a  kind  and  genial 
notice  in  his  Journal ;  it  was  characterized  by  Robert  Cham- 
bers not  less  favorably  in  his  ;  and  Dr.  Hetherington,  the  fu- 
ture historian  of  the  Church  of  Scotland  and  of  the  Westminster 
Assembly  of  Divines, — at  that  time  a  licentiate  of  the  Church, 
— made  it  the  subject  of  an  elaborate  and  very  friendly  critique 
in  the  Presbyterian  Revien.  Nor  was  I  less  gratified  by  the 
terms  in  which  it  was  spoken  of  by  the  late  Baron  Hume,  the 
nephew  and  residuary  legatee  of  the  historian, — himself  very 
much  a  critic  of  the  old  school, — in  a  note  to  a  north-country 
friend.  He  described  it  as  a  work  "  written  in  an  English  style 
which*'  he  "  had  begun  to  regard  as  one  of  the  lost  arts."  But 
it  attained  to  no  great  popularity.  For  being  popular,  its 
subjects  were  too  local,  and  its  treatment  of  them  perhaps  too 
quiet.  My  publishers  tell  me,  however,  that  it  not  only  con- 
tinues to  sell,  but  moves  off  considerably  better  in  its  later 
editions  than  it  did  on  its  first  appearance. 

The  branch  bank  furnished  me  with  an  entirely  new  and  cu- 
rious field  of  observation,  and  formed  a  very  admirable  school. 
For  the  cultivation  of  a  shrewd  common  sense,  a  bank  office 
is  one  of  perhaps  the  best  schools  in  the  world.  Mere  clever- 
ness serves  often  only  to  befool  its  possessor.  He  gets  en 
tangled  among  his  own  ingenuities,  and  is  caught  as  in  a  net 
But  ingenuities,  plausibilities,  special  pleadings,  all  that  make 
the  stump-orator  great,  must  be  brushed  aside  by  the  banker. 
The  questior  with  him  comes  always  to  be  a  sternly  naked 


494  MY   SCHOOLS  AND   SCHOOLMASTERS; 

one : — Is,  or  is  not,  Mr. a  person  fit  to  be  trusted  with 

the  bank's  money  1  Is  his  sense  of  monetary  obligation  nice, 
or  obtuse  ?  Is  his  judgment  good,  or  the  contrary  ?  Are  his 
speculations  sound,  or  precarious  1  What  are  his  resources  1 — 
what  his  liabilities  1  Is  he  facile  in  lending  the  use  of  his  name  1 
Does  he  float  on  wind  bills,  as  boys  swim  on  bladders  ?  or  is 
his  paper  representative  of  only  real  business  transactions'? 
Such  are  the  topics  which,  in  the  recesses  of  his  own  mind,  the 
banker  is  called  on  to  discuss ;  and  he  must  discuss  them,  not 
merely  plausibly  or  ingeniously,  but  solidly  and  truly  ;  seeing 
that  error,  however  illustrated  or  adorned,  or  however  capable 
of  being  brilliantly  defended  in  speech  or  pamphlet,  is  sure  al- 
ways with  him  to  take  the  form  of  pecuniary  loss.  My  supe- 
rior in  the  agency — Mr.  Ross,  a  good  and  honorable-minded 
man,  of  sense  and  experience — was  admirably  fitted  for  cal- 
culations of  this  kind  ;  and  I  learned,  both  in  his  behalf,  and 
from  the  pleasure  which  I  derived  from  the  exercise,  to  take 
no  little  interest  in  them  also.  It  was  agreeable  to  mark  the 
moral  effects  of  a  well  conducted  agency  such  as  his.  How- 
ever humbly  honesty  and  good  sense  may  be  rated  in  the  great 
world  generally,  they  always,  when  united,  bear  premium  in  a 
judiciously-managed  bank  office.  It  was  interesting  enough, 
too,  to  see  quiet  silent  men,  like  "  honest  Farmer  Flamburgh," 
getting  wealthy,  mainly  because,  though  void  of  display,  they 
were  not  wanting  in  integrity  and  judgment ;  and  clever,  un- 
scrupulous fellows,  like  "  Ephraim  Jenkinson,"  who  "  spoke 
to  good  purpose,"  becoming  poor,  \ery  much  because,  with 
all  their  smartness,  they  lacked  sense  and  principle.  It  was 
worthy  of  being  noted,  too,  that  in  looking  around  fiom  my 
peculiar  point  of  view  on  the  agricultural  classes,  I  found  the 
farmers,  on  really  good  farms,  usually  thriving,  if  not  them- 
selves in  fault,  however  high  their  rents ;  and  that,  on  the 
other  hand,  farmers  on  sterile  farms  were  not  thriving,  how- 
ever moderate  the  demands  of  the  landlord.  It  was  more, 
melancholy,  but  not  less  instructive,  to  learn,  from  authori- 
ties whose  evidence  could  not  be  questioned, — bills  paid  by 
small  instalments,  or  lying  under  protest, — that  the  small- 


495 

farm  system,  so  excellent  in  a  past  age,  was  getting  rather  un- 
suited  for  the  energetic  competition  of  the  present  one  :  and 
that  the  small  farmers — a  comparatively  comfortable  class 
some  sixty  or  eighty  years  before,  who  used  to  give  doweries 
to  their  daughters,  and  leave  well-stocked  farms  to  their  sons — 
were  falling  into  straitened  circumstances,  and  becoming,  how- 
ever respectable  elsewhere,  not  very  good  men  in  the  bank. 
It  was  interesting,  too,  to  mark  the  character  and  capabilities 
of  the  various  branches  of  trade  carried  on  in  the  place, — how 
the  business  of  its  shop-keepers  fell  always  into  a  very  few 
hands,  leaving  to  the  greater  number,  possessed,  apparently,  of 
the  same  advantages  as  their  thriving  compeers,  only  a  mere 
show  of  custom, — how  precarious  in  its  nature  the  fishing  trade 
always  is,  especially  the  herring  fishery,  not  more  from  the  un- 
certainty of  the  fishings  themselves,  than  from  the  fluctuations 
of  the  markets, — and  how  in  the  pork  trade  of  the  place  a 
judicious  use  of  the  bank's  money  enabled  the  curers  to  trade 
virtually  on  a  doubled  capital,  and  to  realize,  with  the  deduc- 
tion of  the  bank  discounts,  doubled  profits.  In  a  few  months 
my  acquaintance  with  the  character  and  circumstances  of  the 
business  men  of  the  district  became  tolerably  extensive,  and 
essentially  correct ;  and  on  two  several  occasions,  when  my 
superior  left  me  for  a  time  to  conduct  the  entire  business  of 
the  agency,  I  was  fortunate  enough  not  to  discount  for  him  a 
single  bad  bill.  The  implicit  confidence  reposed  in  me  by  so 
good  and  sagacious  a  man  was  certainly  quite  enough  of  it- 
self to  set  me  on  my  metal.  There  was,  howrever,  at  least  one 
item  in  my  calculations  in  which  I  almost  always  found  my- 
self incorrect :  I  found  I  could  predict  every  bankruptcy  in 
the  district ;  but  I  usually  fell  short  from  ten  to  eighteen 
months  of  the  period  in  which  the  event  actually  took  place. 
I  could  pretty  nearly  determine  the  time  when  the  difficulties 
and  entanglements  which  I  saw  ought  to  have  produced  their 
proper  effects,  and  landed  in  failure ;  but  I  missed  taking  into 
account  the  desperate  efforts  which  men  of  energetic  tempera- 
ment make  in  such  circumstances,  and  which,  to  the  signal 
injur v  of  *heir  friends  and  the  loss  of  their  creditors,  succeed 


496  MY   SCHOOLS   AND   SCHOOLMASTEKS 


usually  in  staving  off  the  catastrophe  for  a  season.  In  shori, 
the  school  of  the  branch  bank  was  a  very  admirable  school ; 
and  I  profited  so  far  by  its  teachings,  that  when  questions  con- 
nected with  banking  are  forced  on  the  notice  of  the  public, 
and  my  brother  editors  hav<  to  apply  for  articles  on  the  sub- 
ject to  literary  bankers,  I  find  I  can  write  my  banking  articles 
for  myself. 

The  seasons  passed  by  ;  the  two  years  of  probation  came  !o 
a  close,  like  all  that  had  gone  before  ;  and  after  a  long,  and,  in 
its  earlier  stages,  anxious  courtship  of  in  all  five  years,  I  re- 
ceived from  the  hand  of  Mr.  Ross  that  of  my  young  friend,  in 
her  mother's  house,  and  was  united  to  her  by  my  minister,  Mr. 
Stewart.  And  then,  setting  out,  immediately  after  the  cere- 
mony, for  the  southern  side  of  the  Moray  Frith,  we  spent  two 
happy  days  together  in  Elgin  ;  and,  under  the  guidance  of  one 
of  the  most  respected  citizens  of  the  place, — my  kind  friend 
Mr.  Isaac  Forsyth, — visited  the  more  interesting  objects  con- 
nected with  the  town  or  its  neighborhood.  He  introduced  us 
to  the  Elgin  Cathedral ; — to  the  veritable  John  Shanks,  the 
eccentric  keeper  of  the  building,  who  could  never  hear  of  the 
Wolf  of  Badenoch,  who  had  burnt  it  four  hundred  years  be- 
fore, without  flying  into  a  rage,  and  becoming  what  the  dead 
man  would  have  deemed  libellous  ; — to  the  font,  too,  under  a 
dripping  vault  of  ribbed  stone,  in  which  an  insane  mother  used 
i,o  sing  to  sleep  the  poor  infant,  who,  afterwards  becoming 
Lieutenant-General  Anderson,  built  for  poor  paupers  like  his 
mother,  and  poor  children  such  as  he  himself  had  once  been, 
the  princely  institution  which  bears  his  name.  And  then,  after 
passing  from  the  stone  font  to  the  institution  itself,  with  its 
happy  children,  and  its  very  unhappy  old  men  and  women, 
Mr.  Forsyth  conveyed  us  to  the  pastoral,  semi-Highland  valley 
of  Pluscardine,  with  its  beautiful  wood-embosomed  priory, — 
one  of  perhaps  the  finest  and  most  symmetrical  specimens  of 
the  unornamented  Gothic  of  the  times  of  Alexander  II.  to  be 
seen  anywhere  in  Scotland.  Finally,  after  passing  a  delight- 
ful evening  at  his  hospitable  board,  and  meeting,  among  other 
gnests,  my  friend  Mr.  Patrick  Duff, — the  author  of  the  "  Geo- 


OR,    THE   STORY   OF   MY   EDUCATION.  497 

log)  of  Moray," — I  returned  with  my  young  wife  to  Cro 
marty,  and  found  her  mother,  Mr.  Ross,  Mr.  Stewart,  and  a 
party  of  friends,  waiting  for  us  in  the  house  which  my  father 
had  built  for  himself  forty  years  before,  but  which  it  had  been 
his  destiny  never  to  inhabit.  It  formed  our  home  for  the  three 
following  years.  The  subjoined  verses, — prose,  I  suspect, 
rather  than  poetry, — for  the  mood  in  which  they  were  written 
was  too  earnest  a  one  to  be  imaginative,  I  introduce,  as  repre- 
sentative of  my  feelings  at  this  time  :  they  were  written  pre 
vious  to  my  marriage,  on  one  of  the  blank  pages  of  a  pocket- 
Bible,  with  which  I  presented  my  future  wife  : — 

TO   LYDIA. 

Lydia,  since  ill  by  sordid  gift 

Were  love  like  mine  express'd, 
Take  Heaven's  best  boon,  this  Sacred  Book, 

From  him  who  loves  thee  best. 
Love  strong  as  that  1  bear  to  thee, 

Were  sure  unaptly  told 
By  dying  flowers,  or  lifeless  gems, 

Or  soul-ensnaring  gold. 

I  know  'twas  He  who  formed  this  heart 

Who  seeks  this  heart  to  guide  ; 
For  why  ?— He  bids  me  love  thee  more 

Than  all  on  earth  beside.* 
Yes,  Lydia,  bids  me  cleave  to  thee, 

As  long  this  heart  has  cleav'd  : 
Would,  dearest,  that  His  other  laws 

Were  half  so  well  received ! 

Full  many  a  change,  my  only  love, 

On  human  life  attends ; 
And  at  the  cold  sepulchral  stone 

Th'  uncertain  vista  ends. 
How  best  to  bear  each  various  change, 

Should  weal  or  woe  befall, 
To  love,  live,  die,  this  Sacred  Book, 

Lydia,  it  tells  us  all. 


•  "  For  this  cause  shall  a  man  leave  father  and  mother,  and  shall  cleave  to  his 
wife;  and  the    twain  shall  be  one  flesh." 


498 


O,  much-beloved,  our  coming  day 

To  us  is  all  unknown ; 
But  sure  we  stand  a  broader  mark 

Than  they  who  stand  alone. 
One  knows  it  all :  not  His  an  eye, 

Like  ours,  obscured  and  dim; 
And  knowing  us,  He  gives  this  book, 

That  we  may  know  of  Him. 

His  words,  my  love,  are  gracious  words, 

And  gracious  thoughts  express : 
He  cares  e'en  lor  each  little  bird 

That  wings  the  blue  abyss. 
Of  coming  wants  and  woes  He  thought, 

Ere  want  or  woe  began ; 
And  took  to  Him  a  human  heart, 

That  He  might  feel  for  man. 

Then  O,  my  first,  my  only  love. 

The  kindliest,  dearest,  best! 
On  Him  may  all  our  hopes  repoea,— 

On  Him  our  wishes  rest. 
His  be  the  future's  doubtful  day. 

Let  joy  or  grief  befall : 
In  life  or  death,  in  weal  or  woe, 
Our  God,  our  guide,  our  all. 


OK,   THE  STORY  OF    Hv    EDUCATION.  499 


CHAPTEE   XXIV 


"  Life  is  a  drama  of  a  few  brief  acts ; 
The  actors  shift,  the  scene  is  often  chang'd 
Pauses  and  revolutions  intervene, 
The  mind  is  set  to  many  a  varied  tune, 
And  jars  and  plays  in  harmony  by  turns." 

Alexander  Bethunk 

Thovgh  my  wife  continued,  after  our  marriage,  to  teach  a 
few  pupils,  the  united  earnings  of  the  household  did  not  much 
exceed  a  hundred  pounds  per  annum, — not  quite  so  large  a 
sum  as  I  had  used  to  think  it  a  few  years  before ;  and  so 
I  set  myself  to  try  whether  I  could  not  turn  my  leisure  hours 
to  some  account,  by  writing  for  the  periodicals.  My  old  in- 
ability of  pressing  for  work  continued  to  be  as  embarrassing  as 
ever,  and,  save  for  a  chance  engagement  of  no  very  promising 
kind,  which  presented  itself  to  me  unsolicited  about  this  time, 
I  might  have  failed  in  procuring  the  employment  which  I 
sought.  An  ingenious  self-taught  mechanic, — the  late  Mr. 
John  Mackay  Wilson  of  Berwiek-on-Tweed, — after  making 
good  his  upward  way  from  his  original  place  at  the  composi- 
tor's frame,  to  the  editorship  of  a  provincial  paper,  started,  in 
the  beginning  of  1835,  a  weekly  periodical,  consisting  of  "  Bor 
der  Titles,"  which,  as  he  possessed  the  story-telling  ability, 
met  with  considerable  success.  He  did  not  live,  however,  to 
complete  the  first  yearly  volume  ;  the  forty -ninth  weekly  num- 
ber intimated  his  death ;  but  as  the  publication  had  been  a 


500 

not  um  profitable  one.  the  publisher  resolved  on  carrying  it  on  ; 
and  it  was  stated  in  a  brief  notice,  which  embodied  a  few  par- 
ticulars of  Mr.  Wilson's  biography,  that,  his  materials  being  un- 
exhausted, "tales  yet  untold  lay  in  reserve,  to  keep  alive  his 
memory.'"  And  in  the  name  of  Wilson  the  publication  was 
kept  up  for,  I  believe,  five  years.  It  reckoned  among  its  con- 
tributes the  two  Bethunes,  John  and  Alexander,  and  the  late 
Professor  Gillespie  of  St.  Andrew's,  with  several  other  writers, 
none  of  whom  seem  to  have  been  indebted  to  any  original  mat- 
ter collected  by  its  first  editor ;  and  I,  who,  at  the  publisher's 
request,  wrote  for  it,  during  the  first  year  of  my  marriage,  tales 
enough  to  fill  an  ordinary  volume,  had  certainly  to  provide  all 
my  materials  for  myself.  The  whole  brought  me  about  twenty- 
five  pounds, — a  considerable  addition  to  the  previous  hundred 
and  odds  of  the  household,  but,  for  the  work  done,  as  inadequate 
a  remuneration  as  ever  poor  writer  got  in  the  days  of  Grub 
Street.  My  tales,  however,  though  an  English  critic  did  me 
the  honor  of  selecting  one  of  them  as  the  best  in  the  monthly 
part  in  which  it  appeared,  were  not  in  the  highest  order ;  it 
took  a  great  deal  of  writing  to  earn  the  three  guineas,  which 
were  the  stipulated  w\oges  for  filling  a  weekly  number ;  and 
though  poor  Wilson  may  have  been  a  fine  enough  fellow  in 
his  way,  one  had  no  great  encouragement  to  do  one's  very  best, 
in  order  to  "  keep  alive  his  memory."  In  all  such  matters, 
according  to  Sir  WTalter  Scott  and  the  old  proverb,  "  every 
herring  should  hang  by  its  own  head." 

I  can  show,  however,  that  at  least  one  of  my  contributions 
did  gain  Wilson  some  little  credit.  In  the  perilous  attempt 
to  bring  out,  in  the  dramatic  form,  the  characters  of  two  of 
(  ur  national  poets, — Burns  and  Fergusson, — I  wrote  for  the 
"  Tales"  a  series  of  "  Recollections,"  drawn  ostensibly  from 
the  memory  of  one  who  had  been  personally  acquainted  with 
them  both,  but  in  reality  based  on  my  own  conceptions  of 
the  men,  as  exhibited  in  their  lives  and  writings.  And  in 
an  elaborate  life  of  Fergusson,  lately  published,  I  find  a  bor- 
rowed extract  from  my  contribution,  and  an  approving  ref- 
erence to  the  whole,  coupled  wTith  a  piece  of  information  en- 


501 

tirely  new  to  me.  "  These  Recollections,"  says  the  biographer, 
"  are  truly  interesting  and  touching,  and  were  the  result  of 
various  communications  made  to  Mr.  Wilson,  whose  pains- 
taking researches  I  have  had  frequent  occasion  to  verify  in  the 
course  of  my  owi ."  Alas,  no  !  Poor  Wilson  was  more  than 
a  twelvemonth  in  his  grave  ere  the  idea  of  producing  these 
;t  Recollections"  first  struck  the  writer, — a  person  to  whom 
no  communications  on  the  subject  were  ever  made  by  any 
one,  and  who,  unassisted  save  by  one  of  the  biographies  of 
the  poet, — that  in  Chambers'  "  Lives  of  Illustrious  Scotsmen," 
— wrote  full  two  hundred  miles  from  the  scene  of  his  sad 
and  brief  career.  The  same  individual  who,  in  Mr.  Wil- 
son's behalf,  is  so  complimentary  to  my  "  pains-taking  re- 
search," is,  I  find,  very  severe  on  one  of  Fergusson's  previous 
biographers, — the  scholarly  Dr.  Irving,  author  of  the  Life  of 
Buchanan,  and  the  lives  of  the  older  Scottish  Poets, — a 
gentleman  who,  whatever  his  estimate  of  the  poor  poet  may 
have  been,  would  have  spared  no  labor  in  elucidating  the 
various  incidents  which  composed  his  history.  The  man  of 
research  is  roughly  treated,  and  a  compliment  awarded  to  the 
diligence  of  the  man  of  none.  But  it  is  always  thus  with 
Fame. 

"  Some  she  disgraced,  and  some  with  honors  crown'd  ; 
Unlike  successes  equal  merils  found  : 
So  her  blind  sister,  fickle  Fortune,  reigns, 
And,  undisceming,  scatters  crowns  and  chains." 

In  the  memoir  of  John  Bethune  by  his  brother  Alexander, 
the  reader  is  told  that  he  was  much  depressed  and  disap- 
pointed, about  a  twelvemonth  or  so  previous  to  his  decease, 
by  the  rejection  of  several  of  his  stories  in  succession,  which 
were  returned  to  him,  "  with  an  editor's  sentence  of  death 
passed  upon  them."  I  know  not  whether  it  was  by  the  edi- 
tor of  tne  "  Tales  of  the  Borders"  that  sentence  in  the  case  was 
passed  ;  but  I  know  he  sentenced  some  of  mine,  which  were, 
I  dare  say,  not  very  good,  though  well  nigh  equal,  I  thought, 
to  most  of  his  own.  Instead,  however,  of  yielding  to  de- 
pression, like  poor  Bethune,  I  simply  resolved  to  write  for 


502  MY  SCHOOLS  AND   SC  tfOO-LMASTEKS  ; 

hmi  no  more ;  anc  straightway  made  an  offer  of  my  services 
to  Mr.  Robert  Chambers,  by  whom  they  were  accepted ;  and 
during  the  two  following  years  I  occasionally  contributed  to 
his  Journal,  on  greatly  more  liberal  terms  than  those  on  which 
I  had  labored  for  the  other  periodical,  and  with  my  name 
attached  to  my  several  articles.  I  must  be  permitted  to  avail 
myself  of  the  present  opportunity  of  acknowledging  the  kind- 
ness of  Mr.  Chambers.  There  is  perhaps  no  other  writer  of 
the  present  day  who  has  done  so  much  to  encourage  strug- 
gling talent  as  this  gentleman.  I  have  for  many  years  ob- 
served, that  publications,  however  obscure,  in  which  he  finds 
aught  really  praiseworthy,  are  secure  always  of  getting,  in  his 
widely-circulated  periodical,  a  kind  approving  word, — that  his 
criticisms  invariably  bear  the  stamp  of  a  benevolent  naturs, 
which  experiences  more  of  pleasure  in  the  recognition  of  merit 
than  in  the  detection  of  defect, — that  his  kindness  does  not 
stop  with  these  cheering  notices,  for  he  finds  time,  in  the 
course  of  a  very  busy  life,  to  write  many  a  note  of  encourage- 
ment and  advice  to  obscure  men  in  whom  he  recognizes  a 
spirit  superior  to  their  condition, — and  that  the  compositions 
of  writers  of  this  meritorious  class,  when  submitted  to  him 
editorially,  rarely  fail,  if  really  suitable  for  his  journal,  to  find 
a  place  in  it,  or  to  be  remunerated  on  a  scale  that  invariably 
bears  reference  to  the  value  of  the  communications, — not  to 
the  circumstances  of  their  authors. 

I  can  scarce  speak  of  my  contributions  to  the  periodicals  at 
this  time  as  forming  any  part  of  my  education.  I  acquired,  in 
their  composition,  a  somewhat  readier  command  of  the  pen  than 
before ;  but  they,  of  course,  tendered  rather  to  the  dissipation  of 
previous  stories  than  to  the  accumulation  of  new  ones  :  nor  did 
they  give  exercise  to  those  higher  faculties  of  mind  which  I 
deemed  it  most  my  interest  to  cultivate.  My  real  education  at 
the  time  was  that  in  wrhich  I  was  gradually  becoming  initiated 
behind  the  bank-counter,  as  my  experience  of  the  business  of 
the  district  extended  ;  and  that  in  which  I  contrived  to  pick  up 
in  my  leisure  evenings  along  the  shores.  A  rich  ichthyolitic 
deposit  of  the  Old  Red  Sandstone  lies,  as  I  have  already  said, 


OK,    THE   STORY   OF   MY   EDUCATION".  508 

within  less  than  half  a  mile  of  the  town  of  Cromarty  ;  and 
when  fatigued  with  my  calculations  in  the  bank,  I  used  to 
find  it  delightful  relaxation  to  lay  open  its  fish  by  scores,  and  to 
study  their  peculiarities  as  exhibited  in  their  various  states  of 
keeping,  until  I  at  length  became  able  to  determine  their  several 
genera  and  species  from  even  the  minutest  fragments.  The 
number  of  ichthyolites  which  that  deposit  of  itself  furnished, — ■ 
a  patch  little  more  than  forty  yards  square, — seemed  altogether 
astonishing :  it  supplied  me  with  specimens  at  almost  every  visit, 
for  ten  years  together ;  nor,  though,  after  I  left  Cromarty  for 
Edinburgh,  it  was  often  explored  by  geologic  tourists,  and  by  a 
few  cultivators  of  science  in  the  place,  was  it  wholly  exhausted 
for  ten  years  more.  The  ganoids  of  the  second  age  of  vertebrate 
existence  must  have  congregated  as  thickly  upon  that  spot  in 
the  times  of  the  Lower  Old  Red  Sandstone,  as  herrings  ever 
do  now,  in  their  season,  on  the  best  fishing-banks  of  Caithness 
or  the  Moray  Frith.  I  was  for  some  time  greatly  puzzled  in 
my  attempts  to  restore  these  ancient  fishes,  by  the  peculiari- 
ties of  their  organization.  It  was  in  vain  I  examined  every 
species  of  fish  caught  by  the  fishermen  of  the  place,  from  the 
dog-fish  and  the  skate,  to  the  herring  and  the  mackerel.  I 
could  find  in  our  recent  fishes  no  such  scales  of  enamelled  bone 
as  those  which  had  covered  the  Dipterians  and  the  Celacanths ; 
and  no  such  plate-encased  animals  as  the  various  species  of 
Coccosteus  or  Pterichthys.  On  the  other  hand,  with  the  ex- 
ception of  a  double  line  of  vertebral  processes  in  the  Coccos- 
teus, I  could  find  in  the  ancient  fishes  no  internal  skeleton : 
they  had  apparently  worn  all  their  bones  outside,  where  the 
crustaceans  wear  their  shells,  and  were  furnished  inside  writh 
but  frameworks  of  perishable  cartilage.  It  seemed  somewhat 
strange,  too,  that  the  geologists  who  occasionally  came  my  way, 
— some  of  them  men  of  eminence,— seemed  to  know  even  less 
about  my  Old  Red  fishes  and  their  peculiarities  of  structure, 
than  I  did  myself.  I  had  represented  the  various  species  of 
the  deposit  simply  by  numerals,  which  not  a  few  of  the  speci- 
mens of  my  collection  still  retain  on  their  faded  labels ;  and 
waited  on  until  some  one  should  come  the  way  learned  enough 


504  MY  SCHOOLS  AND  SCHOODMASTERS  ; 

to  substitute  for  my  provisional  figures,  words  by  which  to 
designate  them  ;  but  the  necessary  learning  seemed  wanting, 
and  I  at  length  came  to  find  that  I  had  got  into  a  terra  incog- 
nita in  the  geological  field,  ihe  greater  portion  of  wrhose  or- 
ganisms were  still  unconnected  with  human  language.  They 
had  no  representative  among  the  vocables. 

I  formed  my  first  imperfect  acquaintance  with  the  recent 
ffanoidal  fishes  in  1836,  from  a  perusal  of  the  late  Dr.  Hib- 
oert's  paper  on  the  deposit  of  Burdiehouse,  which  I  owed  to 
the  kindness  of  Mr.  George  Anderson.  Dr.  Hibbert,  in  illus- 
trating the  fishes  of  the  Coal  Measures,  figured  and  briefly 
described  the  Lepidosteus  of  the  American  rivers  as  a  still 
surviving  fish  of  the  early  type ;  but  his  description  of  the 
animal,  though  supplemented  shortly  after  by  that  of  Dr. 
Buckland  in  the  Bridgewater  Treatise,  carried  me  but  a  little 
way.  I  saw  that  two  of  the  Old  Red  genera, —  Osteolepsis  and 
Diplopterus, — resembled  the  American  fish  externally.  It  will 
be  seen  that  the  first-mentioned  of  these  ancient  ichthyolites 
bears  a  name  compounded,  though,  in  the  reverse  order,  of  ex 
actly  the  same  words.  But  while  I  found  the  skeleton  of  the 
Lepidosteus  described  as  remarkably  hard  and  solid,  I  could 
detect  in  the  Osteopolis  and  its  kindred  genus  no  trace  of  internal 
skeleton  at  all.  The  Cephalaspean  genera,  too, —  Coccosteus  and 
Pterichthys, — greatly  puzzled  me:  I  could  find  no  living  ana- 
logues for  them  ;  and  so,  in  my  often-repeated  attempts  at  res 
toration,  I  had  to  build  them  up  plate  by  plate,  as  a  child  sets 
up  its  dissected  map  or  picture  bit  by  bit, — every  new  speci- 
men that  turned  up  furnishing  a  key  for  some  part  previously 
unknown, — until  at  length,  after  many  an  abortive  effort,  the 
creatures  rose  up  before  me  in  their  strange,  unwonted  pro- 
portions, as  they  had  lived,  untold  ages  before,  in  the  prim- 
aeval seas.  The  extraordinary  form  of  Pterichthys  filled  me 
with  astonishment ;  and,  with  its  arched  carpace  and  flat  plas- 
tron restored  before  me,  I  leaped  to  the  conclusion,  that  as  the 
recent  Lepidosteus,  with  its  ancient  representatives  of  the  Old 
Red  Sandstone,  were  sauroid  fishes, — strange  connecting  links 
between  fishes  and  alligators, — so  the  Pterichthys  was  a  Chelo. 


505 

nian  fish, — a  connecting  link  between  the  fish  and  the  tortoise. 
A  gurnard, — insinuated  so  far  through  the  shell  of  a  small  tor- 
toise as  to  suffer  its  head  to  protrude  from  the  anterior  open- 
ing, furnished  with  oar-like  paddles  instead  of  pectoral  fins, 
and  with  its  caudal  fin  clipped  to  a  point, — would,  I  found, 
form  no  inadequate  representative  of  this  strangest  of  fishes. 
And  when,  some  years  after,  I  had  the  pleasure  of  introducing 
't  to  the  notice  of  Agassiz,  I  found  that,  with  all  his  world- 
wide experience  of  its  class,  it  was  as  muc*h  an  object  of  won- 
der to  him  as  it  had  been  to  myself.  "  It  is  impossible,"  we 
find  him  saying,  in  his  great  work,  "  to  see  aught  more  bi- 
zarre in  all  creation  than  the  PtericlUhyan  genus  :  the  same 
astonishment  that  Cuvier  felt  in  examining  the  Plesiosaurus, 
I  myself  experienced,  when  Mr.  II.  Miller,  the  first  discoverer 
of  these  fossils,  showed  me  the  specimens  which  he  had  de 
tected  in  the  Old  Red  Sandstone  of  Cromarty."  And  there 
were  peculiarities  about  the  Coccosteus  that  scarce  less  excited 
my  wonder  than  the  general  from  of  the  Pterichthys,  and 
which,  when  I  first  ventured  to  describe  them,  were  regarded 
by  the  higher  authorities  in  Palaeontology  as  mere  blunders  on 
the  part  of  the  observer.  I  have,  however,  since  succeeded 
in  demonstrating  that,  if  blunders  at  all, — which  I  greatly 
doubt,  for  Nature  makes  very  few, — it  was  Nature  herself  that 
was  in  error,  not  the  observer.  In  this  strange  Coccostean  genus, 
Nature  did  place  a  group  of  opposing  teeth  in  each  ramus 
of  the  lower  jaw,  just  in  the  line  of  the  svmphysis, — an  ar- 
rangement unique,  so  far  as  it  is  yet  known,  in  the  vertebrate 
division  of  creation,  and  which  must  have  rendered  the  month  of 
these  creatures  an  extraordinary  combination  of  the  horizontal 
mouth  proper  to  the  vertebrata,  and  of  the  vertical  mouth 
proper  to  the  crustaceans.  It  was  favorable  to  the  integrity  <  if 
my  work  of  restoration,  that  the  press  was  not  waiting  for  me, 
and  that  when  portions  of  the  creatures  on  which  T  wrought 
were  wanting,  or  plates  turned  up  whose  places  I  was  unable 
to  determine,  I  could  lay  aside  my  self-imposed  task  for  the 
time,  and  only  resume  it  when  some  new-found  specimen  sup- 
plied me  with  the  materials  requisite  for  carrying  it  on.     And 


506  MY   SCHOOLS   AND    SCHOOLMASTERS  ; 

so  the  restorations  which  I  completed  in  1840,  and  published 
in  1841,  were  found,  by  our  highest  authorities  in  1848,  after 
they  had  been  set  aside  for  nearly  six  years,  to  be  essentially 
the  true  ones  after  all.  I  see,  however,  that  one  of  the  most 
fanciful  and  monstrous  of  all  the  interim  restorations  of  Pter- 
ichthys  given  to  the  world, — that  made  by  Mr.  Joseph  Dinkel 
in  1844  for  the  late  Dr.  Mantell,  and  published  in  the  "  Medals 
of  Creation,"  has  been  reproduced  in  the  recent  illustrated  edi- 
tion of  the  "  Vestiges  of  Creation."  But  the  ingenious  authoi 
of  that  work  would  scarce  act  prudently  were  he  to  stake  the 
soundness  of  his  hypothesis  on  the  integrity  of  the  restora- 
tion. For  my  own  part,  I  consent,  if  it  can  be  shown  that 
the  Pterkhthys  which  once  lived  and  moved  on  this  ancient 
globe  of  ours  ever  either  rose  or  sank  into  the  Pterkhthys  of 
Mr.  Dinkel,  freely  and  fully  to  confess,  not  only  the  possi- 
bility, but  also  the  actuality  of  the  transmutation  of  both 
species  and  genera.  I  am  first,  however,  prepared  to  demon- 
strate, before  any  competent  jury  of  Palaeontologists  in  the 
world,  that  not  a  single  plate  or  scale  of  Mr.  Dinkel's  restora- 
tion represents  those  of  the  fish  which  he  professed  to  restore ; 
that  the  same  judgment  applies  equally  to  his  restoration  of 
Coccosteus  ;  and  that,  instead  of  reproducing  in  his  figures  the 
true  forms  of  ancient  Cephalaspeans,  he  has  merely  given,  in- 
stead, the  likeness  of  things  that  never  were  "  in  the  heaven 
above,  or  in  the  earth  beneath,  or  in  the  waters  under  the 
earth." 

The  place  in  the  geologic  scale,  as  certainly  as  the  forms  and 
characters,  of  these  ancient  fishes  had  to  be  determined.  Mr. 
George  Anderson  had  informed  me,  as  early  as  1834,  that  some 
of  them  were  identical  with  the  ichthyolites  of  the  Gamrie  de- 
posit; but  then  the  place  of  the  Gamrie  deposit  was  still  to 
fix.  It  had  been  recently  referred  to  the  same  geological  hori- 
zon as  the  Carboniferous  Limestone,  and  was  regarded  as  lying 
unconformable  to  the  Old  Red  Sandstone  of  the  district  in 
which  it  occurs  ;  but,  wholly  dissatisfied  with  the  evidence  ad- 
duced, I  continued  my  search,  and,  though  the  process  was 
a  slow  one,  saw  the  position  of  the  Cromarty  beds  gradually 


OR,   THE   STORY  OF  MY  EDUCATION.  507 

approximating  towards  determination.     It  was  not,  however, 
until  the  autumn  of  1837  that  I  got  them  fairly  fixed  down 
to  the  Old  Red  Sandstone,  and  not  until  the  winter  of  1839 
that  1  was  able  conclusively  to  demonstrate  their  place  in  the 
base  of  the  system,  little  more  than  a  hundred  feet,  and  in 
one  part  not  more  than  eighty  feet,  above  the  upper  strata  of 
the  Great  Conglomerate.     I  had  often  wished,  during  my  ex- 
plorations, to  be  able  to  extend  my  field  of  observation  into 
the  neighboring  counties,  in  order  to  determine  whether 
could  not  possess  myself,  at  a  distance,  of  the  evidence  which, 
for  a  time  at  least,  I  failed  to  find  at  home ;  but  my  daily 
engagements  in  the  bank  fixed  me  down  to  Cromarty  and 
its  neighborhood  ;  and  I  found  myself  somewhat  in  the  cir- 
cumstances of  a  tolerably  lively  beetle  stuck  on  a  pin,  that, 
though  able,  with  a  little  exertion,  to  spin  round  its  centre, 
is  yet  wholly  unable  to  quit  it.     I  acquired,  however,  at  the 
close  of  1837,  in  the  late  Dr.  John  Malcolmson  of  Madras,  a 
noble  auxiliary,  who  could  expatiate  freely  over  the  regions 
virtually  barred  against  me.     He  had  been  led  to  visit  Cro- 
marty by  a  brief  description  of  its  geology,  rather  picturesque 
than  scientific,  which  had  appeared  in  my  legendary  volume  ; 
and  after  I  had  introduced  him  to  its  ichthyolitic  beds  on 
both  sides  of  the  Hill  and  at  Eathie,  and  acquainted  him  with 
their  character  and  organisms,  he  set  himself  to  trace  out  the 
resembling  deposits  of  the  neighboring  shires  of  Banff,  Moray, 
and  Nairn.     And  in  little  more  than  a  fortnight  he  had  detect- 
ed the  ichthyolites  in  numerous  localities  all  over  an  Old  Red 
Sandstone  tract,  which  extends  from  the  primary  districts  of 
Banff  to  near  the  field  of  Culloden.    The  Old  Red  Sandstone  of 
tlie  north,  hitherto  deemed  so  poor  in  fossils,  he  found, — with 
the  Cromarty  deposits  as  his  key, — teeming  with  organic  re- 
mains.    In  the  spring  of  1838,  Dr.  Malcolmson  visited  Eng- 
land and  the  Continent,  and  introduced  some  of  my  Cepha- 
laspean  fossils  to  the  notice  of  Agassiz,  and  some  of  the  evi- 
dence which  I  had  laid  before  him  regarding  their  place  in 
the  scale,  to  Mr.  (now  Sir  Roderick)  Murchison.     And  I  had 
the  honor,  in  consequence,  of  corresponding  with  both  these 


508  MY    SCHOOLS  AND    SCHOOLMASTERS  ; 

distinguished  men  ;  and  the  satisfaction  of  knowing,  that  bj 
both,  the  fruit  of  my  labois  was  deemed  important.  I  ob 
serve  that  Humboldt,  in  his  "  Cosmos,"  specially  refers  to  the 
judgment  of  Agassiz  on  the  extraordinary  character  of  the 
new  zoological  link  with  which  I  had  furnished  him  ;  and  1 
find  Murchison,  in  his  great  work  on  the  Silurian  System,  pub- 
lished in  1839,  laying  no  little  emphases  on  the  stratigraphi- 
cal  fact.  After  referring  to  the  previously  formed  opinion  that 
the  Gamrie  deposit,  with  its  ichthyolites,  was  not  an  Old  Red 
one,  he  goes  on  to  say, — "  On  the  other  hand,  I  have  recently 
been  informed  by  Dr.  Malcolmson,thatMr.  Miller  of  Cromarty 
(who  has  made  some  highly  interesting  discoveries  near  that 
place)  pointed  out  to  him  nodules,  resembling  those  of  Gam- 
rie, and  containing  similar  fishes,  in  highly-inclined  strata, 
which  are  interpolated  in,  and  completely  subordinate  to,  the 
great  mass  of  old  Red  Sandstone  of  Ross  and  Cromarty.  This 
important  observation  will,  I  trust,  be  soon  communicated  to 
the  Geological  Society,  for  it  strengthens  the  inference  of  M. 
Agassiz  respecting  the  epoch  during  which  the  CheiracantJius 
and  Cheirolepis  lived."  All  this  will,  I  am  afraid,  appear 
tolerably  weak  to  the  reader,  and  somewhat  more  than  toler- 
ably tedious.  Let  him  remember,  however,  that  the  only 
merit  to  which  I  lay  claim  in  the  case  is  that  of  patient  re- 
search,— a  merit  in  which  whoever  wills  may  rival  or  surpass 
me ;  and  that  this  humble  faculty  of  patience,  when  rightly 
directed,  may  lead  to  more  extraordinary  developments  of 
idea  than  even  genius  itself.  What  I  had  been  slowly  de- 
ciphering were  the  ideas  of  God  as  developed  in  the  mechan- 
ism and  framework  of  his  creatures,  during  the  second  age  of 
vertebrate  existence  ;  and  one  portion  of  my  inquiries  deter- 
mined the  date  of  these  ideas,  and  another  their  character. 

Many  of  the  best  sections  of  the  Sutors  and  the  adjacent 
hills,  with  their  associated  deposits,  cannot  be  examined  with- 
out boat ;  and  so  I  purchased  for  a  few  pounds  a  light  little 
yawl,  furnished  with  mast  and  sail,  and  that  rowed  four  oars, 
to  enable  me  to  carry  out  my  explorations.  It  made  me  free 
of  the  Cromart  v  and  Moray  Friths  for  some  six  or  eight  miles 


509 

from  the  town,  and  afforded  rne  many  a  pleasant  evening's 
excursion  to  the  deep-sea  caves  and  skerries,  and  the  pic- 
turesque surf- wasted  stacks  of  the  granitic  wall  of  rock  which 
runs  in  the  Ben  Nevis  line  of  elevation,  from  Shad  wick  on 
the  east  to  the  Scarfs  Crag  on  the  west.  I  know  not  a  richer 
tract  for  the  geologist.  Independently  of  the  interest  that  at- 
taches to  its  sorely-contorted  granitic  gneiss, — which  seems,  as 
Murchison  shrewdly  remarks,  to  have  been  protruded  through 
the  sedimentary  deposits  in  a  solid  state,  as  a  fractured  hone 
is  sometimes  protruded  though  the  integuments, — there  occurs 
along  the  range  three  several  deposits  of  the  Old  Red  Ichthyo- 
lites,  and  three  several  deposits  of  the  Lias,  besides  the  sub- 
aqueous ones,  with  two  insulated  skerries,  which  I  am  inclined 
to  regard  as  outliers  of  the  Oolite.  These  last  occur  in  the 
form  of  half-tide  rocKS,  very  dangerous  to  the  mariner,  which 
lie  a  full  half-mile  from  the  shore,  and  can  be  visited  with  safety 
only  at  low-water  during  dead  calms,  when  no  ground-swell 
comes  rolling  in  from  the  sea.  I  have  set  out  as  early  as  two 
o'clock  in  a  fine  summer  morning  for  these  skerries,  and,  after 
spending  several  hours  upon  them,  have  been  seated  at  the 
bank  desk  before  ten ;  but  these  were  mornings  of  very  hard 
work.  It  was  the  long  Saturday  afternoons  that  were  my  fa- 
vorite seasons  of  exploration  ;  and  when  the  weather  was  fine, 
my  wife  would  often  accompany  me  in  these  excursions;  and  we 
not  unfrequently  anchored  our  skiff  in  some  rocky  bay,  or  over 
some  fishing  bank,  and,  provided  with  rods  and  lines,  caught, 
ere  our  return,  a  basket  of  rock-cod  or  coal-fish  for  supper,  that 
always  seemed  to  eat  better  than  the  fish  supplied  us  in  the  mar 
ket.  These  were  happy  holidays.  Shelley  predicates  of  a  day 
of  exquisite  beauty,  that  it  would  continue  to  "  live  like  joy  in 
memory."  I  do  retain  recollections  of  these  evenings  spent  in 
my  little  skifl* — recollections  mingled  with  a  well  remembered 
imagery  of  blue  seas  and  purple  hills,  and  a  sun  lit  town  in 
the  distance,  and  tall  wood-crested  precipices  nearer  at  hand, 
which  flung  lengthening  shadows  across  shore  and  sea. — that 
not  merely  represent  enjoyments  which  have  been,  but  that, 
in  certain  moods  of  the  r_.ind,  take  the  form  of  enjoyment  still. 


510 

They  are  favored  spots  in  the  chequered  prospect  of  the  past, 
on  which  the  sunshine  of  memory  falls  more  brightly  than  on 
most  of  the  others. 

When  thus  employed,  there  broke  out  very  unexpectedly,  a 
second  war  with  the  Liberal  Moderates  of  the  town,  in  which, 
unwillingly  rather  than  otherwise,  I  had  ultimately  to  engage. 
The  Sacrament  of  the  Supper  is  celebrated  in  most  of  the 
parish  churches  of  the  north  of  Scotland  only  once  a  year ;  and, 
as  many  of  the  congregations  worship  at  that  time  in  the  open 
air,  the  summer  and  autumn  seasons  are  usually  selected  for 
the  "  occasion,"  as  best  fitted  for  open-air  meetings.  As,  how- 
ever, the  celebration  is  preceded  and  followed  by  week-day 
preachings,  and  as  on  one  of  these  week-days — the  Thursday 
preceding  the  Sacramental  Sabbath — no  work  is  done,  Kirk- 
Sessions  usually  avoid  fixing  their  sacrament  in  a  busy  time, 
such  as  the  time  of  harvest  in  the  rural  districts,  or  of  the  her- 
ring-fishing in  the  seaport  towns ;  and  as  the  parish  of  Cromarty 
has  both  its  rural  population  and  its  fishing  one,  the  Kirk-Ses- 
sion of  the  place  have  to  avoid  both  periods.  And  so  the  early 
part  of  July,  ere  the  herring-fishing  or  the  harvest  comes  on,  is 
the  time  usually  fixed  upon  for  the  Cromarty  Sacrament.  In 
this  year,  however  (1838),  it  so  chanced  that  the  day  appointed 
for  the  Queen's  coronation  proved  coincident  with  the  Sacra- 
mental Thursday,  and  the  Liberal  Moderate  party  urged  upon 
the  Session  that  the  preparations  for  the  Sacrament  should  give 
way  to  the  rejoicings  for  the  Coronation.  We  had  not  been  much 
accustomed  to  rejoicings  of  the  kind  in  the  north  since  the  good 
old  times  when  respectable  Tory  gentlemen  used  to  show  them- 
selves drunk  in  public  on  the  King's  birth-day,  in  order  to  de- 
monstrate their  loyalty :  the  coronation  days  of  both  George  IV. 
and  William  IV.  had  passed  off  as  quietly  as  Sabbaths ;  and  the 
Session,  holding  that  it  might  be  quite  as  well  for  people  to  pray 
for  their  young  Queen  at  church,  and  then  quietly  drink  her 
health  when  they  got  home,  as  to  grow  glorious  in  her  behalf 
m  taverns  and  tap-rooms,  refused  to  alter  their  day.  Believing 
that,  though  essentially  in  the  right,  they  were  yet  politically  in 
'he  wrong,  and  that  a  plausible  case  might  be  made  out  against 


511 

tliem  by  the  newspaper  press,  I  waited  on  my  minister,  and 
urged  him  to  give  way  to  the  liberals,  and  have  his  preparation- 
day  changed  ft  om  Thursday  to  Friday.  He  seemed  quite  will- 
ing enough  to  act  on  the  suggestion  ;  nay,  he  had  made  a  simi- 
lar one,  he  told  me,  to  his  Session  ;  but  the  devout  eldership, 
strong  in  the  precedents  of  centuries,  had  declinedto  subordinate 
the  religious  services  of  the  Kirk  to  the  wassail  and  merriment 
sanctioned  by  the  State.  And  so  they  determined  on  keeping 
"their  day  of  sacramental  preparation  on  the  Thursday,  as  their 
fathers  had  done.  Meanwhile,  the  Liberals  held  what  was  very 
properly  termed  a  public  meeting,  seeing  that,  though  the  pub- 
lic had  failed  to  attend  it,  the  public  had  been  quite  at  liberty 
to  do  so,  nay,  had  even  been  specially  invited ;  and  there  appear- 
ed in  the  provincial  newspapers  a  long  report  of  its  proceedings, 
including  five  speeches, — all  written  by  a  legal  gentleman, — 
in  which  it  was  designated  a  meeting  of  the  inhabitants  of  the 
town  and  parish  of  Cromarty.  The  resolutions  were,  of  course, 
of  the  most  enthusiastically  loyal  character.  There  wa,s  not  a 
member  of  the  meeting  who  was  not  prepared  to  spend  upon 
himself  the  last  drop  of  his  bottle  of  port  in  her  majesty's  behalf. 
Thursday  came, — the  Thursday  of  the  Sacrament  and  of  the 
coronation  ;  and,  with  ninety-nine  hundredths  of  the  church- 
going  population  of  my  townsfolk,  I  went  to  church  as  usual.  The 
parochial  resolutioners,  amounting  in  all  to  ten,  were,  I  can 
honestly  avouch,  scarce  at  all  missed  in  a  congregation  of  near- 
ly as  many  hundreds.  About  mid-day,  however,  we  could 
hear  the  muffled  report  of  their  carronades ;  and,  shortly  after 
the  service  was  over,  and  we  had  returned  to  our  homes, 
there  passed  through  the  streets  a  forlorn  little  group  of  indi- 
viduals, that  looked  exceedingly  like  a  press-gang,  but  was  in 
reality  intended  for  a  procession.  Though  joined  by  a  pro- 
prietor from  a  neighboring  parish,  a  lawyer  from  a  neigh- 
boring burgh,  a  small  coast-guard  party,  with  its  command- 
ing officer,  and  two  half-pay  Episcopalian  officers  beside,  the 
number  who  walked,  including  boys,  did  not  exceed  twenty- 
five  persons;  and  of  these,  as  I  have  said,  only  ten  were 
parishioners      The  processionists  had  a  noble  dinner  in  the 


512 

head  inn  of  the  place1, — merrier  than  even  dinners  of  celebra- 
tion usually  are,  as  it  was,  of  course,  loyalty  and  public  spirit 
to  ignore  the  special  claim  upon  the  day  assented  by  the 
Church ;  and  the  darkening  evening  saw  a  splendid  bonfire 
blazing  from  the  brae-head.  And  the  Liberal  newspapers 
south  and  north  taking  part  with  the  processionists,  in  many 
a  paragraph  and  short  leader,  representing  their  froiic, — for  such 
it  was,  and  a  very  foolish  one, — as  a  splendid  triumph  of  the 
people  of  Cromarty  over  Presby  terial  bigotry  and  clerical  domi- 
nation. Nay,  so  bad  did  the  case  of  my  minister  and  his  Ses- 
sion appear,  thus  placed  in  opposition  to  at  once  the  people  and 
the  Queen,  that  the  papers  on  the  other  side  failed  to  take  it 
up.  A  well-written  letter  on  the  subject  by  my  wife,  which 
fairly  stated  the  facts,  was  refused  admission  into  even  the 
ecclesiastico-Conservative  journal,  specially  patronized,  at  the 
time,  by  the  Scottish  Church ;  and  my  minister's  friends  and 
brethren  in  the  south  could  do  little  else  than  marvel  at  what 
they  deemed  his  wondrous  imprudence. 

I  had  anticipated,  from  the  first,  that  his  position  was  to 
be  a  bad  one ;  but  I  ill  liked  to  see  him  with  his  back  to 
the  wall.  And  though  I  had  determined,  on  the  rejection 
of  my  counsel,  to  take  no  part  in  the  quarrel,  I  now  resolved 
to  try  whether  I  could  not  render  it  evident  that  he  was  really 
not  at  issue  with  his  people,  but  with  merely  a  very  incon- 
siderable clique  among  them,  who  had  never  liked  him  ;  and 
that  it  was  much  a  joke  to  describe  him  as  disaffected  to  his 
sovereign,  simply  because  he  had  held  his  preparation  ser- 
vices on  the  day  of  her  coronation.  In  order  to  make  good 
my  first  point,  I  took  the  unpardonable  liberty  of  giving  the 
names  in  full,  in  a  letter  which  appeared  in  our  northern  news- 
papers, of  every  individual  who  walked  in  the  procession,  and 
represented  themselves  as  the  people ;  and  challenged  the  ad- 
dition of  even  a  single  name  to  a  list  ludicrously  brief.  And  in 
making  good  the  second,  I  fairly  succeeded,  as  there  were  not 
a  few  conical  circumstances  in  the  transaction,  in  getting  the 
laughers  on  my  side.  The  clique  was  amazingly  angry,  and 
wrote  not  very  bright  letters,  which  appeared  as  advertise- 


OR,   THE   STORY  OF  MY   EDUCATION.  513 

merits  in  the  newspapers,  and  paid  duty  to  make  evident  the  fact. 
There  was  a  shallow  and  very  ignorant  young  shoemaker  in  the 
place,  named  Chaucer,  a  native  of  the  south  of  Scotland,  who 
represented  himself  as  the  grandson  of  the  old  poet  of  the  days  of 
Edwaid  III.,  and  wrote  particularly  wretched  doggrel  to  make 
good  his  claim.  And,  having  a  quarrel  with  the  Kirk-Session, 
in  a  certain  delicate  department,  he  had  joined  the  proces- 
sionists, and  celebrated  their  achievements  in  a  ballad  entirely 
worthy  of  them.  And  it  was  peihaps  the  severest  cut  of  all, 
that  the  recognized  leader  of  the  band  pronounced  Chau- 
cer the  younger  a  greatly  better  poet  than  me.  There  were 
representations,  too,  made  to  my  superiors  in  the  banking 
department  at  Edinburgh,  which  procured  me  a  reprimand, 
though  a  gentle  one ;  but  my  superior  in  Cromarty, — Mr. 
Ross, — as  wise  and  good  a  man  as  any  in  the  direction,  and 
thoroughly  acquainted  with  the  merits  of  the  case,  was  wholly 
on  my  side.  I  am  afraid  the  reader  may  deem  all  this  very 
foolish,  and  hold  ,hat  I  wTould  have  been  better  employed 
among  the  rocks,  In  determining  the  true  relations  of  their 
various  beds,  and  the  character  of  their  organisms,  than  in 
bickering  in  a  petty  village  quarrel,  and  making  myself  ene- 
mies. And  yet,  man  being  what  he  is,  I  fear  an  ability  of 
efficient  squabbling  is  a  greatly  more  marketable  one  than  any 
ability  whatever  of  extending  the  boundaries  of  natural  science. 
At  least  so  it  was,  that  while  my  geological  researches  did 
nothing  fur  me  at  this  time,  my  letter  in  the  procession  con- 
troversy procured  for  me  the  offer  of  a  newspaper  editorship. 
Bui  though,  in  a  pecuniary  point  of  view,  I  would  have  con- 
siderably bettered  my  circumstances  by  closing  with  it,  I  found 
I  could  not  do  so  without  assuming  the  character  of  the  special 
pleader,  and  giving  myself  to  the  advocacy  of  views  and  prin- 
ciples which  I  really  did  not  hold ;  and  so  I  at  once  declined 
the  office,  as  one  for  which  I  did  not  deem  myself  suited,  and 
could  not  in  conscience  undertake. 

I  found  about  this  time  more  congenial  employment,  though, 
of  course,  it  occupied  only  my  leisure  hours,  in  writing  the 
memoir  of  atownsman, — the  late  Mr.  Williai  t  Forsyth  of  Oo- 


514  MY  SCHOOLS  AND   SCHOOLMASTERS; 

marty, — at  the  request  of  his  relation  and  son-in-law,  my  friend 
Mr.  Isaac  Fc  rsyth  of  Elgin.  \VilliamForsythhadbeenagro\vn 
man  ere  the  abolition  of  the  hereditary  jurisdictions ;  and,  from 
the  massiveness  and  excellence  of  his  character,  and  his  high 
standing  as  a  merchant,  in  apart  of  the  country  in  which  mer- 
chants at  the  time  were  few,  he  had  succeeded,  within  the  pre- 
cincts of  the  town,  to  not  a  little  of  the  power  of  the  hereditary 
Sheriff  of  the  district ;  and  after  acting  for  more  than  half  a 
century  as  a  laborious  Justice  of  the  Peace,  and  succeeding  in 
making  up  more  quarrels  than  most  country  lawyers  have  an 
opportunity  of  fomenting, — for  the  age  was  a  rude  and  com 
biitive  one,  and  the  merchant  ever  a  peace-maker, — he  lived 
long  enough  to  see  Liberty-and-Equality  Clubs  and  Processions, 
and  died  about  the  close  of  the  first  war  of  the  first  French  Rev- 
olution. It  was  an  important  half-century  in  Scotland — 
though  it  exhibits  but  a  narrow,  inconspicuous  front  in  the  his- 
tory of  the  country — that  intervened  between  the  times  of  the 
hereditary  jurisdictions  and  the  Liberty-and-Equality  Clubs. 
It  was  specially  the  period  during  which  popular  opinion  be- 
gan to  assume  its  potency,  and  in  which  the  Scotland  of  the 
past  merged,  in  consequence,  into  the  very  dissimilar  Scotland 
of  the  present.  And  I  derived  much  pleasure  in  tracing  some 
of  the  more  striking  features  of  this  transition  age  in  the  bi- 
ography of  Mr.  Forsyth.  My  little  work  was  printed,  but  not 
published,  and  distributed  by  Mr.  Forsyth  of  Elgin  among  the 
friends  of  the  family,  as  perhaps  a  better  and  more  adequate 
memorial  of  a  worthy  and  able  man  than  could  be  placed  over 
his  grave.  It  was  on  the  occasion  of  the  death  of  his  last- 
surviving  child, — the  late  Mrs.  M'Kenzie  of  Cromarty,  a  lady 
from  whom  I  had  received  much  kindness,  and  under  whose 
hospitable  roof  I  had  the  opportunity  afforded  me  of  meeting 
not  a  few  superior  men, — that  my  memoir  was  undertaken  ; 
and  I  regarded  it  as  a  fitting  tribute  to  a  worthy  family  just 
passed  away,  at  once  deserving  of  being  remembered  for  its 
own  sake,  and  to  which  I  owed  a  debt  of  gratitude. 

In  the  spring  of  1839,  a  sad  bereavement  darkened  my 
household,  and  for  a  time  left  me  little  heart  to  pursue  my 


515 

wonted  amusements,  literary  or  scientific.  We  had  been  visit- 
ed, ten  months  after  our  marriage,  by  a  little  girl,  whose  pres- 
ence had  added  not  a  little  to  our  happiness  :  home  became 
more  emphatically  such  from  the  presence  of  the  child,  that 
in  a  few  months  had  learned  so  well  to  know  its  mother,  and 
in  a  few  more  to  take  its  stand  in  the  nurse's  arms,  at  an  upper 
window  that  commanded  the  street,  and  to  recognize  and  make 
signs  to  its  father  as  he  approached  the  house.  Its  few  little 
words,  too,  had  a  fascinating  interest  to  our  ears  ; — our  own 
names,  lisped  in  a  language  of  its  own,  every  time  we  approach- 
ed ;  and  the  simple  Scotch  vocable  "  awa,  awa,"  which  it  knew 
how  to  employ  in  such  plaintive  tones  as  we  retired,  and  that 
used  to  come  back  upon  us  in  recollection,  like  an  echo  from  the 
grave,  when,  its  brief  visit  over,  it  had  left  us  forever,  and  its 
fair  face  and  silken  hair  lay  in  darkness  amid  the  clods  of  the 
church-yard.  In  how  short  a  time  had  it  laid  hold  of  our 
affections  !  Two  brief  years  before,  and  we  knew  it  not ;  and 
now  it  seemed  as  if  the  void  which  it  left  in  our  hearts  the 
whole  world  could  not  fill.  We  buried  it  beside  the  old 
chapel  of  St.  Regulus,with  the  deep  rich  woods  all  around,  save 
where  an  opening  in  front  commands  the  distant  land  and  the 
blue  sea  ;  and  where  the  daisies,  which  had  learned  to  love, 
mottle,  star-like,  the  mossy  mounds  ;  and  where  birds,  whose 
songs  its  ear  had  become  skilful  enough  to  distinguish,  pour 
their  notes  over  its  little  grave.  The  following  simple  but 
truthful  stanzas,  which  I  found  among  its  mother's  papers, 
seem  to  have  been  written  in  this  place, — sweetest  of  burying- 
grounds, — a  few  weeks  after  its  burial,  when  a  chill  and  back- 
ward spring,  that  had  scowled  upon  its  lingering  illness,  broke 
out  at  once  into  genial  summer : — 

Thou'rt  "awa,  awa,"  from  thy  mother's  side, 

And  K  awa,  awa,"    from  thy  lather's  knee  ; 
Thou'rt  "awa"  from  our  blessing,  our  care,  our  caressing, 

But  "  awa"  from  our  hearts  thou'lt  never  be. 

All  things,  dear  child,  that  were  wont  to  please  hee 

Are  round  thee  here  in  beauty  bright, — 
There's  music  rare  in  the  cloudless  air, 

And  the  earth  is  teeming  with  living  delight. 
23 


516  MY  SCHOOLS  AND  SCHOOLMASTERS  J 

Thou'rt  "awa,  awa,"  from  the  bursting  spring  time, 
Tho1  o'er  thy  head  its  green  boughs  wave ; 

The  lambs  are  leaving  their  little  footprints 
Upon  the  turf  of  thy  new-made  grave. 

And  art  thou  "  awa,"  and  M  awa"  forever 
That  little  face, — that  tender  frame, — 

That  voice  which  first,  in  sweetest  accents, 
CalPd  me  the  mother's  thrilling  name,- 

That  head  of  nature's  finest  moulding, — 
Those  eyes,  the  deep  night  ether's  blue 

Where  sensibility  its  shadows 

Of  ever-changing  meaning  threw  ? 

Thy  sweetness,  patience  under  suffering, 

All  promis'd  us  an  opening  day 
Most  fair,  and  told  that  to  subdue  thee 

Would  need  but  love's  most  gentle  sway. 

Ah  me !  'twas  here  I  thought  to  lead  thee, 
And  tell  thee  what  are  life  and  death, 

And  raise  thy  serious  thought's  first  waking 
To  Him  who  holds  our  every  breath. 

And  does  my  selfish  heart  then  grudge  thee, 
That  angels  are  thy  teachers  now, — 

That  glory  from  thy  Saviour's  presence 
Kindles  the  crown  upon  thy  brow  ? 

O,  no !  to  me  earth  must  be  lonelier, 
Wanting  thy  voice,  thy  hand,  thy  lore; 

Vet  dost  thou  dawn  a  star  of  promise, 
Mild  beacon  to  the  world  al>ori. 


517 


CHAPTER  XXV. 

"  All  for  the  Church,  and  a  Utile  less  for  the  Stat*  " 


Belhaven 


I  had  taken  no  very  deep  interest  m  the  Voluntary  contro 
Fersy.  There  was,  I  thought,  a  good  deal  of  overstatement 
and  exaggeration  on  both  sides.  On  the  one  hand  the  Volun 
taries  failed  to  convince  me  that  a  State  endowment  for  eccle- 
siastical purposes  is  in  itself  in  any  degree  a  bad  thing.  I  had 
direct  experience  to  the  contrary.  I  had  evidence  the  most 
unequivocal  that  in  various  parts  of  the  country  it  was  a 
very  excellent  thing  indeed.  It  had  been  a  very  excellent 
thing,  for  instance,  in  the  parish  of  Cromarty,  ever  since  the 
Revolution,  down  to  the  death  of  Mr.  Smith, — in  reality,  a 
valuable  patrimony  of  the  people  there  ;  for  it  had  supplied  the 
parish,  free  of  cost,  with  a  series  of  popular  and  excellent  min- 
isters, whom  otherwise  the  parishioners  would  have  had  to 
pay  for  themselves.  And  it  had  now  given  us  my  friend  Mr. 
Stewart,  one  of  the  ablest  and  honestest  ministers  in  Scotland 
or  elsewhere,  whether  Established  or  Dissenting.  And  these 
facts,  which  were  but  specimens  of  a  numerous  class,  had  a  tan- 
gibility and  solidity  about  them  which  influenced  me  more 
than  all  the  theoretic  reasonings  pressed  on  my  attention  about 
the  mischief  done  to  the  Church  by  the  over-kindness  of  Con- 
stantine,  or  the  corrupting  effects  of  State  favor.  But  then  I 
could  as  little  agree  with  some  of  my  friends  on  the  endowment 


518  MY  SCHOOLS  AND   SCHOOLMASTERS; 

side,  that  the  Establishment,  even  in  Scotland,  was  everywhere 
of  value,  as  with  some  of  the  Voluntaries  that  it  was  nowhere 
of  any.  I  had  resided  for  months  together  in  various  parts 
of  the  country,  where  it  would  have  mattered  not  a  farthing  to 
any  one  save  the  minister  and  his  family,  though  the  Estab- 
lishment had  been  struck  down  at  a  blow.  Religion  and 
morals  would  have  no  more  suffered  by  the  annihilation  of  the 
minister's  stipend,  than  by  the  suppression  of  the  pension  of  i 
some  retired  supervisor  or  superannuated  officer  of  customs. ' 
Nor  could  I  forget,  that  the  only  religion,  or  appearance  of  re- 
ligion, that  existed  in  parties  of  workmen  among  which  I  had 
been  employed  (as  in  the  south  of  Scotland,  for  instance),  was 
to  be  found  among  their  Dissenters, — most  of  them,  at  the 
time,  asserters  of  the  Voluntary  principle.  If  the  other  work- 
men were  reckoned,  statistically  at  least,  adherents  of  the  Es- 
tablishment, it  was  not  because  they  either  benefited  by  it  01 
cared  for  it,  but  only  somewhat  in  the  way  that,  according  to 
the  popular  English  belief,  persons  born  at  sea  are  held  to  be 
long  to  the  parish  of  Stepney.  Further,  I  did  not  in  the  least 
like  the  sort  of  company  into  which  the  Voluntary  controversy 
had  introduced  the  good  men  on  both  sides  :  it  gave  a  common 
cause  to  the  Voluntary  and  the  Infidel,  and  drew  them  cordially 
together  ;  and,  on  the  other  hand,  placed  side  by  side,  on  terms 
portentously  friendly,  the  pious  asserter  of  endowments  and  the 
irreligious  old  Tory.  There  was  religion  on  both  sides  of  the 
controversy,  but  a  religious  controversy  it  was  not. 

The  position  of  my  grandmother's  family,  including,  of 
course,  Uncles  James  and  Sandy,  was  a  sort  of  midway  one 
between  the  Secession  and  the  Establishment.  My  grand- 
mother had  quitted  the  family  of  Donald  Roy  long  ere  he  had 
been  compelled,  very  unwillingly,  to  leave  the  Church ;  and 
as  no  forced  settlements  had  taken  place  in  the  parish  into 
which  she  had  removed,  and  as  its  ministers  had  been  all  men 
of  the  right  stamp,  she  had  done  what  Donald  himself  had 
been  so  desirous  to  do, — remained  an  attached  member  of 
the  Establishment.  One  of  her  sisters  had,  however,  mar- 
-ied  in  Nigg ;  and  she  and  her  husband,  following  Donald 


OR,    THE   STORY   OF   MY   EDUCATION.  519 

into  the  ranks  of  the  Secession,  had  reared  one  of  their  boys 
to  the  ministry,  who  became,  in  course  "of  time,  the  respected 
minister  of  the  congregation  which  his  great-grandfather  had 
founded.  And,  as  the  contemporary  and  first  cousin  of  my 
uncles,  the  minister  used  to  call  upon  them  every  time  he 
came  to  town ;  and  my  Uncle  James,  in  turn  (Uncle  Sandy 
\ery  rarely  went  to  the  country),  never  missed,  when  in  Nigg 
or  its  neighborhood,  to  repay  his  visits.  There  was  thus  a 
good  deal  of  intercourse  kept  up  between  the  families,  no 
without  effect.  Most  of  the  books  of  modern  theology  which 
my  uncles  read  were  Secession  books,  recommended  by  their 
cousin  ;  and  the  religious  magazines  for  which  they  subscribed 
was  a  Secession  magazine.  The  latter  bore,  I  remember,  the 
name  of  the  "Christian  Magazine,  or  Evangelical  Repository." 
It  was  not  one  of  the  brightest  of  periodicals,  but  a  sound 
and  solid  one,  with,  as  my  uncles  held,  a  good  deal  of  the  old 
unction  about  it ;  and  there  was,  in  especial,  one  of  the  con- 
tributors whose  papers  they  used  to  pick  out  as  of  peculiar  ex- 
cellence, and  not  unfrequently  read  a  second  time.  They  bore 
the  somewhat  Greek-looking  signature  of  Leumas,  as  if  the 
writer  had  been  a  brother  or  cousin-german  of  some  of  the  old 
Christians  to  whom  Paul  used  to  notify  kind  regards  and  good 
wishes  at  the  end  of  his  epistles ;  but  it  was  soon  discovered 
that  Leumas  was  merely  the  proper  name  Samuel  reversed, 
though  who  the  special  Samuel  was  who  turned  his  signature 
to  the  right  about,  placing  the  wrong  end  foremost,  and  wrote 
with  all  the  concise  weight  and  gravity  of  the  old  divines,  my 
uncles  never  knew.  They  had  both  passed  away  ere,  in  perus- 
ing the  "  Second  Gallery  of  Literary  Portraits,"  I  found  my- 
self introduced  to  worthy  old  Leumas,  also  a  denizen  of  the 
unseen  world  at  the  time,  as  the  father  of  the  writer  of  that 
brilliant  work, — the  Rev.  George  Gilfillan  of  Dundee.  This 
kind  of  writing  had,  of  course,  its  proper  effect  on  my  uncles, 
and,  through  them,  on  the  family  :  it  kept  up  our  respect  for 
the  Secession.  The  Established  Church,  too,  was  in  those 
days  a  tolerably  faulty  institution.  My  uncles  took  an  interest 
in  missions  ;  and  the  Church  had  none  :  nay,  its  deliberate  de- 


520  MY  SCHOOLS  AND  SCHOOLMASTERS  ; 

cision  against  them, — thatof  1796, — remained  still  unreversed. 
It  had  had,  brides,  its  forced  settlements  in  our  immediate 
neighborhood ;  and  Moderatism,  wise  and  politic  in  its  gen 
eration,  had  perpetrated  them  by  the  hands  of  some  of  the 
better  ministers  of  the  d  strict,  who  had  learned  to  do  what 
they  themselves  believed  to  be  very  wicked  things  when  their 
Church  bade  them, — a  sort  of  professional  license  which  my 
uncles  could  not  in  the  least  understand.  In  short,  the  Seces- 
sion better  pleased  them,  in  the  main,  than  the  Establishment, 
though  to  the  Establishment  they  continued  to  adhere,  and 
tailed  to  see  on  what  Seceder  principle  their  old  friends  were 
becoming  Voluntaries.  On  the  breaking  out  of  the  controversy, 
I  remembered  all  this ;  and,  when  told  by  good  men  of  the 
Established  Church  that  well  nigh  all  the  vital  religion  of 
the  country  was  on  our  side,  and  that  it  had  left  the  Vol- 
untary Seceders,  though  the  good  men  themselves  honestly 
believed  what  they  said,  I  could  not.  Further,  the  heads 
of  a  conversation  which  I  had  overheard  in  my  cousin  the 
Seceder  minister's  house,  when  I  was  a  very  young  boy, — and 
to  which  it  could  have  been  little  suspected  that  I  was  listen- 
ing, for  I  was  playing  at  the  time  on  the  floor, — had  taken  a 
strong  hold  of  my  memory,  and  often  returned  upon  me  at 
this  period.  My  cousin  and  some  of  his  elders  were  mourn- 
ing— very  sincerely,  I  cannot  doubt— over  the  decay  of  religion 
among  them  :  they  were  falling  far  short,  they  said,  of  the  at- 
tainments of  their  fathers ;  there  were  no  Donald  Roys  among 
them  now ;  and  yet  they  felt  it  to  be  a  satisfaction,  though  a 
sad  one,  that  the  little  religion  which  there  was  in  the  district 
seemed  to  be  all  among  themselves.  And  now,  here  was  there 
exactly  the  same  sort  of  conviction,  equally  strong,  on  the  other 
side.  But  with  all  that  liberally-expressed  charity  which 
forms  one  of  the  distinctive  features  of  the  present  time,  and 
is  in  reality  one  of  its  best  things,  there  is  still  a  vast  amount 
of  appreciation  of  this  partial  kind.  Friends  are  seen  in  the 
Christian  aspect ;  opponents  in  the  polemic  one  :  and  it  is  too 
often  forgotter.  that  the  friends  have  a  polemic  aspect  to  their 
opponents,  and  the  opponents  a  Christian  aspect  to  their  friends. 


521 

And  not  only  in  the  present,  but  at  all  former  periods,  the 
case  seems  to  have  been  the  same.  I  am  sometimes  half  dis- 
posed to  think,  that  either  the  Prophet  Elijah,  or  the  seven 
thousand  honest  men  who  had  not  bowed  the  knee  to  Baal, 
must  have  been  dissenters.  Had  the  Prophet  been  entirely 
at  one  in  his  views  with  the  seven  thousand,  it  is  not  easy  to 
conceive  how  he  could  have  been  wholly  ignorant  of  their  ex- 
istence. 

With  all  these  latitudinarian  convictions,  however,  I  was 
thoroughly  an  Establishment  man.  The  revenues  of  the  Scot- 
tish Church  I  regarded,  as  I  have  said,  as  the  patrimony  of  the 
Scottish  people  ;  and  1  looked  forward  to  a  time  when  that  un- 
warrantable appropriation  of  them,  through  which  the  aristoc- 
racy had  sought  to  extend  its  influence,  but  which  had  served 
only  greatly  to  reduce  its  power  in  the  country,  would  come  to  an 
end.  What  I  specially  wanted,  in  short,  was,  not  the  confiscation 
of  the  people's  patrimony,  but  simply  its  restoration  from  the 
Moderates  and  the  lairds.  And  in  the  enactment  of  the  Veto 
law  I  saw  the  process  of  restoration  fairly  begun.  I  would 
have  much  preferred  seeing  a  good  broad  anti-patronage  agita- 
tion raised  on  the  part  of  the  Church.  As  shrewdly  shown  at 
the  time  by  the  late  Dr.  M'Crie,  such  a  course  would  have  been 
at  once  wiser  and  safer.  But  for  such  an  agitation  even  the 
Church's  better  ministers  were  not  in  the  least  prepared.  From 
1712  to  1784, — a  period  of  seventy-two  years, — the  General 
Assembly  had  yearly  raised  its  voice  against  the  enactment 
of  the  patronage  law  of  Queen  Anne,  as  an  .unconstitutional 
encroachment  on  those  privileges  of  the  Church  and  those 
rights  of  the  Scottish  people  which  the  Treaty  of  Union 
had  been  framed  to  secure.  But  the  half  century  which  had 
passed,  since,  through  the  act  of  a  Moderate  majority,  the 
protest  had  been  dropped,  had  produced  the  natural  effect. 
By  much  the  greater  part  of  even  the  better  ministers  of  the 
Church  had  been  admitted  into  their  offices  through  the  law 
of  patronage  ;  and,  naturally  grateful  to  the  patrons  wrho  had 
befriended  them,  they  hesitated  to  make  open  war  on  tne 
powers  that  had  beer  exerted  in  their  own  behalf.     Accord- 


522  MY  SCHOOLS  AND  SCHOOLMASTERS  ; 

ing  to  Solomon,  the  "  gift"  had  to  a  certain  extent  "  de- 
stroye  1  the  heart ;"  and  so  they  were  preparea  to  take  up 
merely  a  half-way  position,  which  their  predecessors,  the  old 
popular  divines,  would  have  liked  exceedingly  ill.  I  could 
not  avoid  seeing  that,  fixed  in  a  sort  of  overtopped  hollow, 
if  I  may  so  speak,  between  the  claims  of  patronage  on  the 
one  hand  and  the  rights  of  the  people  on  the  other,  it  was 
a  most  perilous  position,  singularly  open  to  misconception 
and  misrepresentation  on  both  sides ;  and  as  it  virtually  strip- 
ped the  patrons  of  half  their  power,  and  extended  to  the 
people  only  half  their  rights,  I  was  not  a  little  afraid  that 
the  patrons  might  be  greatly  more  indignant  than  the  people 
grateful,  and  that  the  Church  might,  in  consequence,  find  her- 
self exposed  to  the  wrath  of  very  potent  enemies,  and  backed 
by  the  support  of  only  lukewarm  friends.  But,  however  per- 
ilous and  difficult  as  a  post  of  occupation,  it  was,  I  could  not 
avoid  believing,  a  position  conscientiously  taken  up ;  nor 
could  I  doubt  that  its  grounds  were  strictly  constitutional. 
The  Church,  in  a  case  of  disputed  settlement,  might,  I  be- 
lieved, have  to  forfeit  the  temporalities,  if  her  decision  differed 
from  that  of  the  law  courts,  but  only  the  temporalities  con- 
nected with  the  case  at  issue  ;  and  these  I  deemed  worth  risk- 
ing in  the  popular  behalf,  seeing  that  they  might  be  regarded 
as  already  lost  to  the  country  in  every  case  in  which  a  parish 
was  assigned  to  a  minister  whom  the  parishioners  refused  to 
hear.  It  rejoiced  me,  too,  to  see  the  revival  of  the  old  spirit 
in  the  Church ;  and  so  I  looked  with  an  interest  on  the  earlier 
stages  of  her  struggle  with  the  law  courts,  greatly  more  in- 
tense than  that  with  which  any  mere  political  contest  had 
ever  inspired  me.  I  saw  with  great  anxiety  decision  after  de- 
cision go  against  her ;  first  that  of  the  Court  of  Session  in 
March  1838,  and  next  that  of  the  House  of  Lords  in  May 
1839  ;  and  then  with  the  original  Auehterarder  case  of  collision 
I  saw  that  of  Lethendy  and  Marnoch  mixed  up ;  and,  as  one 
entanglement  succeeded  another,  confusion  becoming  worse 
confounded.  It  was  only  when  the  Church's  hour  of  peril  came 
that  I  learned  to  know  how  much  I  really  valued  her,  and  how 


OR,    THE   STORY   OF   MY   EDUCATION.  523 

strong  and  numerous  the  associations  were  that  bound  her  to 
my  affections.  I  had  experienced  at  least  the  average  amount 
of  interest  in  political  measures  whose  tendency  and  principles 
I  deemed  good  in  the  main, — such  as  the  Reform  Bill,  the  Cath- 
olic Emancipation  Act,  and  the  Emancipation  of  the  Negroes ; 
but  they  had  never  cost  me  an  hour's  sleep.  Now,  however, 
I  felt  more  deeply  ;  and  for  at  least  one  night,  after  reading 
the  speech  of  Lord  Brougham,  and  the  decision  of  the  House 
of  Lords  in  the  Audit erarder  case,  I  slept  none. 

In  truth,  the  position  of  the  Church  at  this  time  seemed 
critical  in  the  extreme.  Offended  by  the  usage  which  she 
had  received  at  the  hands  of  the  Whigs,  in  her  claims  for 
endowments  to  her  new  chapels,  and  startled  by  their  general 
treatment  of  the  Irish  Establishment,  and  the  suppression  of 
the  ten  bishopricks,  she  had  thrown  her  influence  into  the 
Tory  scale,  and  had  done  much  to  produce  that  re-action 
against  the  Liberal  party  in  Scotland  which  took  place  during 
the  Ministry  of  Lord  Melbourne.  In  the  representation  of  at 
least  one  county  in  which  she  was  all-potent, — Ross-shire, — she 
had  succeeded  in  substituting  a  Tory  for  a  Whig ;  and  there 
were  few  districts  in  the  kingdom  in  which  she  had  not  very 
considerably  increased  the  votes  on  the  Tory,  or,  as  it  was  term- 
ed, Conservative  side.  The  people,  however,  though  they  might, 
and  did,  become  quite  indifferent  enough  to  the  Whigs,  could 
not  follow  her  into  the  Tory  ranks.  They  stood  aloof, — very 
suspicious,  not  without  reason,  of  her  new  political  friends, — ■ 
no  admirers  of  the  newspapers  which  she  patronized,  and  not 
in  the  least  able  to  perceive  the  nature  of  the  interest  wdrich 
she  had  begun  to  take  in  supernumerary  bishops  and  the  Irish 
Establishment.  And  now,  when  once  more  in  a  position 
worthy  of  her  old  character,  and  when  her  Tory  friends, — con- 
verted at  once  into  the  bitterest  and  most  ungenerous  of  ene^ 
mies, — were  turning  upon  her  to  rend  her,  she  had  at  once  to 
encounter  the  hostility  of  the  Whigs  and  the  indifferency  of 
the  people.  Further,  with  but  one,  or  at  most  two  exceptions, 
all  the  newspapers  which  she  had  patronized  declared  against 
her,  and  were  throughout  the  struggle  the  bitterest  and  most; 


524 

abusive  of  her  opponents.  The  Voluntaries,  too,  joined  with 
redoubled  vehemence  in  the  cry  raised  to  drown  her  voice  and 
misinterpret  and  misrepresent  her  claims.  The  general  cur- 
rent of  opinion  ran  strongly  against  her.  My  minister,  warmly 
interested  in  the  success  of  the  Non-Intrusion  principle,  has 
told  me,  that  for  many  months  I  was  the  only  man  in  his 
parish  that  seemed  thoroughly  to  sympathize  with  him;  and 
I  have  no  doubt  that  the  late  Dr.  George  Cook  was  perfectly 
correct  and  truthful  when  he  about  this  time  remarked,  in  one 
of  his  public  addresses,  that  he  could  scarce  enter  an  inn  or  a 
stage-coach,  without  finding  respectable  men  inveighing  against 
the  utter  folly  of  the  Non-Intrusionists,  and  the  worse  than 
madness  of  the  Church  Courts. 

Could  I  do  nothing  for  my  Church  in  her  hour  of  peril  1 
There  was,  I  believed,  no  other  institution  in  the  country  half 
so  valuable,  or  in  which  the  people  had  so  large  a  stake.  The 
Church  was  of  right  theirs, — a  patrimony  won  for  them  by 
the  blood  of  their  fathers,  during  the  struggles  and  suffer- 
ings of  more  than  a  hundred  years  ;  and  now  that  her  better 
ministers  were  trying,  at  least  partially,  to  rescue  that  patri- 
mony for  them  from  the  hands  of  an  aristocracy  who,  as  a 
body  at  least,  had  no  spiritual  interest  in  the  Church, — belong- 
ing, as  most  of  its  members  did,  to  a  different  communion, — 
they  were  in  danger  of  being  put  down,  unbacked  by  the  popu- 
lar support  which  in  such  a  cause  they  deserved.  Could  I  not 
do  something  to  bring  up  the  people  to  their  assistance  ?  I 
tossed  wakefully  throughout  a  long  night,  in  which  I  formed 
my  plan  of  taking  up  the  purely  popular  side  of  the  question  ; 
and  in  the  morning  I  sat  down  to  state  my  views  to  the  people, 
in  the  form  of  a  letter  addressed  to  Lord  Brougham.  I  devoted 
to  my  new  employment  every  moment  not  imperatively  de- 
manded by  my  duties  in  the  bank  office,  and,  in  about  a  week  af- 
ter, was  able  to  despatch  the  manuscript  of  my  pamphlet  to  the 
respected  manager  of  the  Commercial  Bank, — Mr.  Robert  Paul, 
— a  gentleman  from  whom  I  had  received  much  kindness  when 
in  Edinburgh,  and  who,  in  the  great  ecclesiastical  struggle, 
took  decided  part  with  the  Church.     Mr.  Paul  brought  it  to 


OR,   THE   STORY   OF   MY   EDUCATION.  525 

his  minister,  the  Rev.  Mr.  Candlish  of  St.  George's  (ru  at  Dr. 
Candlish),  who,  recognizing  its  popular  character,  urged  its  im- 
mediate publication  ;  and  the  manuscript  was  accordingly  put 
intc  the  hand  of  Mr.  Johnstone,  the  well-known  Church  book- 
seller. Dr.  Candlish  had  been  one  of  a  party  of  ministers  and 
elders  of  the  Evangelical  majority  who  had  met  in  Edinburgh 
shortly  before,  to  take  measures  for  the  establishment  of  a 
newspaper.  All  the  Edinburgh  press,  with  the  exception  (if 
one  newspaper,  had  declared  against  the  ecclesiastical  party ; 
and  even  that  one  rather  received  articles  and  paragraphs  in 
their  behalf  through  the  friendship  of  the  proprietor,  than  was 
itself  on  their  side.  There  had  been  a  larger  infusion  of 
Whiggism  among  the  Edinburgh  Churchmen  than  in  any 
other  part  of  the  kingdom.  They  had  seen  very  much,  in 
consequence,  that  the  line  taken  by  the  Conservative  portion 
of  their  friends,  in  addressing  the  people  through  the  press, 
had  not  been  an  efficient  one; — their  friends  had  set  themselves 
to  make  the  people  both  good  Conservatives  and  good  Church- 
men, and  of  course  had  never  got  over  the  first  point,  and 
never  would ;  and  what  they  now  purposed  was,  to  establish 
a  paper  that,  without  supporting  any  of  the  old  parties  in  the 
State,  would  be  as  Liberal  in  its  politics  as  in  its  Churchman- 
ship.  But  there  was  a  preliminary  point  which  they  also 
could  not  get  over.  All  the  ready-made  editors  of  the  king- 
dom, if  I  may  so  speak,  had  declared  against  them ;  and  for 
want  of  an  editor,  their  meeting  had  succeeded  in  originating, 
not  the  intended  newspaper,  but  merely  a  formal  recognition, 
in  a  few  resolutions,  of  its  desirableness  and  importance.  On 
reading  my  pamphlet  in  manuscript,  however,  Dr.  Candlish 
at  once  concluded  that  the  desired  want  was  to  be  supplied 
Dy  its  writer.  Here,  he  said,  is  the  editor  we  have  been  look- 
ing for.  Meanwhile,  my  little  work  issued  from  the  press,  and 
was  successful.  It  ran  rapidly  through  four  editions  of  a  thou- 
sand copies  each, — the  number,  as  I  subsequently  ascertained, 
of  a  popular  non-intrusion  pamphlet  that  would  fairly  sell, 
— aud  was  read  pretty  extensively  by  men  who  were  not  Non- 
Intrusionists.     Among  these  there  were  several  members  of 


526 

the  Ministry  of  the  time,  including  the  late  Lord  Melbourne, 
who  at  first  regarded  it,  as  1  have  been  informed,  as  the  com- 
position, under  the  popular  form  and  a  nommede  guerre,  of  some 
of  the  Non-Intrusion  leaders  in  Edinburgh  ;  and  by  the  late 
Mr  O'Connell,  who  had  no  such  suspicions,  and  who,  though 
he  lacked  sympathy,  as  he  said,  with  the  ecclesiastical  views 
which  it  advocated,  enjoyed  what  he  termed  its  ;t  racy  Eng- 
lish," and  the  position  in  which  it  placed  the  Noble  Lord  to 
whom  it  was  addressed.  It  was  favorably  noticed,  too,  by 
Mr.  Gladstone,  in  his  elaborate  work  on  Church  Principles ; 
and  was,  in  short,  both  in  the  extent  of  its  circulation,  and 
the  circles  into  which  it  found  its  way,  a  very  successful 
pamphlet. 

So  filled  was  my  mind  with  our  ecclesiastical  controversy, 
that  while  yet  unacquainted  with  the  fate  of  my  first  brochure, 
I  was  busily  engaged  with  a  second.  A  remarkable  cause  of 
intrusion  had  occurred  in  the  district  rather  more  than  twenty 
years  before;  and  after  closing  my  week's  labors  in  the  bank, 
I  set  out  for  the  house  of  a  friend  in  a  neighboring  parish  on 
a  Saturday  evening,  that  I  might  attend  the  deserted  church 
on  the  following  Sabbath,  and  glean  from  actual  observation 
the  materials  of  a  truthful  description,  which  would,  I  trusted, 
tell  in  the  controversy.  And  as  the  case  was  one  of  those  in 
which  truth  proves  stranger  than  fiction,  what  I  had  to  de- 
scribe was  really  very  curious ;  and  my  description  received 
an  extensive  circulation.  I  insert  the  passage  entire,  as  prop- 
erly a  part  of  my  story. 

"There  were  associations  of  a  peculiarly  high  character  connected  with  this 
northern  parish.  For  more  than  a  thousand  years  it  had  formed  part  of  the 
patrimony  of  a  truly  noble  family,  celebrated  by  Philip  Doddridge  for  its  great 
moral  worth,  and  by  Sir  Walter  Scott  for  its  high  military  genius  ;  and  through 
whose  influence  the  light  of  the  Reformation  had  been  introduced  into  this  re- 
mote corner,  at  a  period  when  the  neighboring  districts  were  enveloped  in  the 
original  darkness.  In  a  later  age  it  had  been  honored  by  the  fines  and  proscrip- 
tions  of  Charles  II. ;  and  its  minister,— one  of  tho?e  men  of  God  whose  names 
still  live  in  the  memory  of  the  country,  and  whose  biography  occupies  no  small 
space  in  the  recorded  history  of  her  'worthies,' — had  rendered  himself  so  ob- 
noxious to  the  tyranny  and  irreligion  of  the  time,  that  he  was  ejected  from  his 
charge  more  than  a  year  before  any  of  the  other  non-conforming  clergymen  of  the 


527 

Church.*  I  approached  the  parish  from  the  east.  The  day  was  varm  and 
pleasant ;  the  scenery  through  which  I  passed  some  of  the  finest  in  Scotland. 
The  mountains  rose  on  the  right,  in  huge  Titanic  masses,  that  seemed  to  soften 
their  purple  and  blue  in  the  clear  sunshine,  to  the  delicate  tone  of  the  deep 
sky  beyond;  and  I  could  see  the  yet  unwasted  snows  of  winter  glittering,  in 
little  detached  masses,  along  their  summits.  The  hills  of  the  middle  region 
were  leathered  with  wood;  a  forest  of  mingled  oaks  and  larches,  which  still 
blended  the  tender  softness  of  spring  with  the  full  foliage  of  summer,  swept 
down  tc  the  path ;  the  wide  undulating  plain  below  was  laid  out  into  fields, 
mottled  with  cottages,  and  waving  with  the  yet  unshot  corn;  and  a  noble 
arm  of  the  sea  winded  along  the  lower  edge  for  nearly  twenty  miles,  losing 
Itself  to  the  west,  among  blue  hills  and  jutting  headlands,  and  opening  ii/ 
the  east  to  the  main  ocean,  through  a  magnificent  gateway  of  rock.  But  tin 
little  groups  which  I  encountered  at  every  turning  of  the  path,  as  they  jour- 
neyed with  all  the  sober,  well-marked  decency  of  a  Scottish  Sabbath  morn 
ing,  towards  the  church  of  a  neighboring  parish,  interested  me  more  than 
even  the  scenery.  The  clan  which  inhabited  this  part  of  the  country  had 
borne  a  well-marked  character  in  Scottish  story.  Buchanan  had  described  it 
as  one  of  the  most  fearless  and  warlike  in  the  north.  It  served  under  the 
Bruce  of  Bannockburn.  It  was  the  first  to  rise  in  arms  to  protect  Queen 
Mary,  on  her  visit  to  Inverness,  from  the  intended  violence  of  Huntly.  It 
fought  the  battles  of  Protestantism  in  Germany,  under  Gustavus  Adolphus. 
It  covered  the  retreat  of  the  English  at  Fontenoy ;  and  presented  an  un- 
unbrokeu  front  lo  the  enemy,  after  all  the  other  allied  troops  had  quitted  the 
field.  And  it  was  the  descendants  of  those  very  men  who  were  now  pass- 
ing me  on  the  road.  The  rugged,  robust  form,  half  bone,  half  muscle,— 
the  springy  firmness  of  the  tread, — the  grave,  manly  countenance,—  all  gave 
indication  that  the  original  characteristics  survived  in  their  full  strength;  and 
it  was  a  strength  that  iu-pired  confidence,  not  fe.ir.  There  were  gray-haired, 
patriarchal-looking  men  among  the  groupes,  whose  very  air  seemed  impressed 
by  a  sense  of  the  duties  of  the  day;  nor  was  there  aught  that  did  not 
agree  with  the  object  of  the  journey,  in  the  appearance  of  even  the  yuiingest 
and  least   thoughtful. 

"As  I  proceeded,  I  came  up  with  a  few  people  who  were  travelling  in  a 
contrary  direction.  A  Secession  meeting-house  has  lately  sprung  up  in  the 
parish,  and  these  formed  part  of  the  congregation.  A  path,  nearly  obscured 
by  grass  and  weeds,  leads  from  the  main  road  to  the  parish  church.  It  was 
with  difficulty  I  could  trace  it,  and  there  were  none  lo  direct  me,  for  I  wa9 
now  walking  alone.  The  parish  burying-ground,  thickly  sprinkled  with  graves 
and  tombstones,  surrounds  the  church.  It  is  a  quiet,  solitary  spot,  of  great 
beauty,  lying  beside  the  sea-shore;  and  as  service  had  not  yet  commenced,  I 
whiled  away  half  an  hour  in  sauntering  among  the  stones,  and  deciphering 
the   inscriptions.    I  could  trace  in  the  rude  monuments  of  this  retiied  little  spot,  a 


•Thomas   Hog  of  Kiltearn.    See    li Scots  Worthies;''  or  the  cheap-publication 
volumes  of  tl.e  Free  Church  for  1846. 


528 

brief  but  interesting  history  of  the  district.  The  older  tablets,  gray  and  shaggy  with 
the  mosses  and  lichens  of  three  centuries,  bear,  in  their  uncouth  semblances 
of  the  unwieldy  battle-axe  and  double-handed  sword  of  ancient  warfare,  the 
meet  and  appropriate  symbols  of  the  earlier  time.  But  the  more  modern  testify 
to  the  introduction  of  a  humanizing  influence.  They  speak  of  a  life  after  death, 
in  the  "holy  texts"  described  by  the  poet;  or  certify  in  a  quiet  humility  of 
style  which  almost  vouches  for  their  truth,  that  the  sleepers  below  were  '•  hone»t 
men  of  blameless  character,  and  who  feared  God."  There  is  one  tombstone, 
however,  more  remarkable  than  all  the  others.  It  lies  beside  the  church-door, 
mi  testifies,  in  an  antique  description,  that  it  covers  the  remains  of  the  "greai, 
an.of.God.and.faithful. minister. of.Jesus.Christ.,"  who  had  endured  persecut- 
ion for  the  truth  in  the  dark  days  of  Charles  and  his  brother.  He  had  out- 
lived the  tyranny  of  the  Stuarts;  and  though  worn  by  years  and  sufferings, 
had  returned  to  his  parish  on  the  Revolution,  to  end  his  course  as  it  had 
begun.  He  saw,  ere  his  death,  the  law  of  patronage  abolished,  and  the  popular 
right  virtually  secured  ;  and  fearing  lest  his  people  might  be  led  to  abuse  the 
important  privilege  conferred  upon  them,  and  calculating  aright  on  the  abiding 
influence  of  his  own  character  among  them,  he  gave  charge  on  his  death-bed 
to  dig  his  grave  in  the  threshold  of  the  church,  that  they  might  regard  him  as 
a  sentinel  placed  at  the  door,  and  that  his  tombstone  might  speak  to  them  as 
they  passed  out  and  in.  The  inscription,  which,  after  the  lapse  of  nearly  a 
century  and  a  half,  is  still  perfectly  legible,  concludes  with  the  following  re- 
markable word* : — "  This. stone. shall.bkar. witness.against.the.parisiiioners- 

OF.KlLTEARN.lF.THEY. BRING. ANE. UNGODLY. MINISTER. IN. HERE."  Could  the  imagina- 
tion of  a  poet  have  originated  a  more  striking  conception  in  connection  with 
a  church  deserted  by  all  its  better  people,  and  whose  minister  fattens  on  his 
hire,  useless  and  contented  ? 

"I  entered  the  church,  for  the  clergyman  had  just  gone  in.  There  were 
from  eight  to  ten  persons  scattered  over  the  pews  below,  and  seven  in  the 
galleries  above;  and  these,  as  there  were  no  more  '  Peter  darks'1  or  '  Michael 
Tods'1*  in  the  parish,  composed  the  entire  congregation.  I  wrapped  myself  up 
in  my  plaid,  and  sat  down ;  and  the  service  went  on  in  the  usual  course  ;  but 
it  sounded  in  my  e:irs  like  a  miserable  mockery.  The  precentor  sung  almost 
alone  ;  and  ere  the  clergyman  had  reached  the  middle  of  his  discourse,  which 
he  read  in  an  unimpassioned,  monotonous  tone,  nearly  one  half  his  skeleton 
congregation  had  fallen  asleep ;  and  the  drowsy,  listless  expression  of  the  others 
showed  that,  for  every  good  purpose,  they  might  have  been  asleep  too.  And 
Sabbath  after  Sabbath  has  this  unfortunate  man  gone  the  same  tiresome  round. 
and  with  exactly  the  same  effect  for  the  last  twenty-three  years;— at  no  time 
regarded  by  the  better  clergymen  of  the  district  as  really  their  brother,— on 
no  occasion  recognized  by  the  parish  as  virtually  its  minisier;— with  a  dreary 
vacancy  and  a  few   indifferent  hearts  inside   his  church,   and   the   stone  of    the 


*  Peter  Clark  and  Michael  Tod  were  the  only  individuals  who,  in  a  popu- 
lation of  three  thousand  souls,  attached  their  signatures  to  the  call  of  the  ob 
noxious  presentee,  Mr.  Young,  in  the  famous  Auchterarder  case. 


529 

Covenanter  at  the  door.  Against  whom  does  the  inscription  testify  ?  for  the 
people  have  escaped.  Against  the  patron,  the  intruder,  and  the  law  of  Boling. 
broke,— the  Dr.  Robertsons  of  the  last  au'e,  and  the  Dr.  Cooks  of  the  present. 
It  is  well  to  learn  from  this  hapless  parish  the  exact  sense  in  which,  in  a 
different  state  of  matters,  the  Rev.  Mr.  Young  would  have  been  constituted 
minister  of  Auchterarder.  It  is  well,  too,  to  learn,  that  there  may  be  vacan- 
cies in  the  Church  where  no  blank   appears   in   the   Almanac." 

On  my  return  home  from  this  journey,  early  on  the  follow- 
ing Monday,  I  found  a  letter  from  Edinburgh  awaiting  me, 
requesting  nie  to  meet  there  with  the  leading  Non-Intru- 
sionists.  And  so,  after  describing,  in  the  given  extract,  the 
scene  ^hich  I  had  just  witnessed,  and  completing  my  second 
pamphlet,  I  set  out  for  Edinburgh,  and  saw  for  the  first  time 
men  with  whose  names  I  had  been  familiar  during  the  course 
of  the  Voluntary  and  Non-Intrusion  controversies.  And  enter- 
ing into  their  plans,  though  with  no  little  shrinking  of  heart, 
lest  I  should  be  found  unequal  to  the  demands  of  a  twice-a- 
week  paper,  that  would  have  to  stand,  in  Ishmael's  position, 
against  almost  the  whole  newspaper  press  of  the  kingdom,  I 
agreed  to  undertake  the  editorship  of  their  projected  newspaper, 
the  Witness.  Save  for  the  intense  interest  with  which  I  regard- 
ed the  struggle,  and  the  stake  possessed  in  it,  as  I  believed,  by 
the  Scottish  people,  no  consideration  whatever  would  have  in- 
duced me  to  take  a  step  so  fraught,  as  I  thought  at  the  time, 
with  peril  and  discomfort.  For  full  twenty  years  I  had  never 
been  engaged  in  a  quarrel  on  my  own  account:  all  my  quarrels, 
either  directly  or  indirectly,  were  ecclesiastical  ones ; — I  had 
fought  for  my  minister,  or  for  my  brother  parishioners  :  and  fain 
now  would  I  have  lived  at  peace  with  all  men  :  but  the  editor- 
ship of  a  Non-Intrusion  newspaper  involved,  as  a  portion  of  its 
duties,  war  with  all  the  wrorld.  I  held,  besides, — not  aware 
how  very  much  the  spur  of  necessity  quickens  production, — that 
its  twice-a-week  demands  would  fully  occupy  all  my  time,  and 
that  I  would  have  to  resign,  in  consequence,  my  favorite  pur- 
suit,— geology.  I  had  once  hoped,  too, — though  of  late  years 
the  hope  had  been  becoming  faint, — to  leave  some  little  mark 
behind  me  in  the  literature  of  my  country ;  but  the  last  re- 
mains of  the  expectation  had  now  to  be  resigned.     The  news- 


530 

paper  editor  writes  in  sand  when  the  flood  is  coming  in.  If  he 
but  succeed  in  influencing  opinion  for  the  present,  he  must  be 
content  to  be  forgotten  in  the  future.  But  believing  the  cause 
to  be  a  good  one,  I  prepared  for  a  life  of  strife,  toil,  and  com- 
parative obscurity.  In  counting  the  cost,  I  very  considerably 
exaggerated  it ;  but  I  trust  I  may  say  that,  in  all  honesty,  and 
with  no  sinister  aim,  or  prospect  of  worldly  advantage,  I  did 
count  it,  and  fairly  undertook  to  make  the  full  sacrifice  whicl 
the  cause  demanded. 

It  was  arranged  that  our  new  paper  should  start  with  tho 
new  twelvemonth  (1840)  ;  and  I  meanwhile  returned  to  Cro- 
marty, to  fulfil  my  engagements  with  the  bank  till  the  close 
of  its  financial  year,  which  in  the  Commercial  Bank  offices 
takes  place  at  the  end  of  autumn.  Shortly  after  my  return 
Dr.  Chalmers  visited  the  place  on  the  last  of  his  Church  Ex- 
tension journeys ;  and  I  heard,  for  the  first  time,  the  most 
impressive  of  modern  orators  address  a  public  meeting,  and 
had  a  curious  illustration  of  the  power  which  his  "deep 
mouth"  could  communicate  to  passages  little  suited,  one 
might  suppose,  to  call  forth  the  vehemency  of  his  eloquence. 
In  illustrating  one  of  his  points,  he  quoted  from  my  "  Me- 
moir of  William  Forsyth"  a  brief  anecdote,  set  in  descrip- 
tion of  a  kind  which  most  men  would  have  read  quietly 
enough,  but  which,  coming  from  him,  seemed  instinct  with 
the  Homeric  vigor  and  force.  The  extraordinary  impress- 
iveness  which  he  communicated  to  the  passage  served  to 
show  me,  better  than  aught  else,  how  imperfectly  great 
orators  may  be  represented  by  their  written  speeches.  Ad- 
mirable as  the  published  sermons  and  addresses  of  Dr. 
Chalmers  are,  they  impart  no  adequate  idea  of  that  wonder- 
ful power  and  impressiveness  in  which  he  excelled  all  other 
British  preachers.* 

I  had  been  introduced  to  the  Doctor  in  Edinburgh  a  few 


•  The  following  is  the  passage  which  was  honored  on  this  occasion  by 
Chalmers,  and  which  told,  in  his  hands,  with  all  the  effect  of  the  most  power- 
ful   acting:— "Saunders    Macivoi    the    mate  of  the    'Elizabeth,'    was    a    grave 


OR,   THE   STORY  OF  MY  EDUCATION.  531 

weeks  before ;  but  on  this  occasion  I  saw  rather  more  of  him. 
He  examined  with  curious  interest  my  collection  of  geological 
specimens,  which  already  contained  not  a  few  valuable  fossils 
that  could  be  seen  nowhere  else ;  and  I  had  the  pleasure  of 
spending  the  greater  part  of  a  day  in  visiting  in  his  company, 
by  boat,  some  of  the  more  striking  scenes  of  the  Cromarty 
Sutors.  I  had  long  looked  up  to  Chalmers  as,  on  the  whole, 
the  man  of  largest  mind  which  the  Church  of  Scotland  had 
ever  produced  ;  not  more  intense  or  practical  than  Knox,  but 
broader  of  faculty  ;  nor  yet  fitted  by  nature  or  accomplish 


and  somewhat  hard-favored  man,  powerful  in  bone  and  muscle,  even  after  he 
had  considerably  turned  his  sixtieth  year,  and  much  respected  for  his  inflexi- 
ble integrity  and  the  depth  of  his  religious  feelings.  Both  the  mate  and  his  de- 
vout wife  were  especial  favoriles  with  Mr.  Porieous  of  Kilmuir,— a  minister  of 
the  same  class  as  the  Pedens,  Renwicks,  and  Cargils  of  a  firmer  age;  and  on 
one  occasion  when  the  sacrament  was  dispensed  in  his  parish,  and  Saunders  was 
absent  on  one  of  his  Continental  voyages,  Mrs.  Macivor  was  an  inmate  of  the 
manse.  A  tremendous  storm  burst  out  in  the  night-time,  and  the  poor  woman 
lay  awake,  listening  in  utter  tem»r  to  the  fearful  roarings  of  the  wind,  as  it 
howled  in  the  chimneys,  and  shook  the  casements  and  the  doors.  At  length, 
when  she  could  lie  still  no  longer,  she  arose,  and  crept  along  the  passage  to 
the  dour  of  the  minister's  chamber.  'O,  Mr.  Porteous,'  she  said,  'Mr.  Porteous, 
do  ye  no  hear  that  ? — and  poor  Saunders  on  his  way  back  frae  Holland  !  O,  rise, 
rise,  and  ask  the  strong  help  o'  your  Master!'  The  minister  accordingly  rose 
and  entered  his  closet.  The  '  Elizabeth'  at  this  critical  moment  was  driving 
onwards  through  spray  and  darkness,  along  the  northern  shores  of  the  Moray 
Frith.  The  fearful  skerries  of  Shandwick,  where  so  many  gallant  vt  ssels  have 
perished,  were  close  at  hand ;  and  the  increasing  roll  of  the  sea  showed  the 
gradual  shallowing  of  the  water.  Macivor  and  his  old  townsman  Robert  Hos- 
eack  stood  together  at  the  binnacle.  An  immense  wave  came  rolling  behind, 
and  they  had  but  barely  time  to  clutch  to  the  nearest  hold,  when  it  broke 
over  them  half-mast  high,  sweeping  spars,  bulwarks,  cordage,  all  before  it,  in 
its  course.  It  passed,  but  the  vessel  rose  not.  Her  deck  remained  buried  ;u 
a  sheet  of  foam,  and  she  seemed  settling  down  by  the  head.  There  was  &, 
frightful  pause.  First,  however,  the  bowsprit  and  the  butts  of  the  windlass, 
began  tc  emerge,— next  the  forecastle,— the  vessel  seemed  as  if  shaking  her- 
self from  the  load;  and  then  the  whole  deck  appeared,  as  she  went  tiling 
over  the  next  wave.  'There  are  still  more  mercies  in  store  for  us,'  said  Mac- 
ivor, addressing  his  companion;  'she  floats  still.'  '  O,  Saunde.-s,  Saunders!' ex- 
claimed Robert,  'there  was  surely  some  God's  soul  at  work  for  us,  or  she 
would  never  have  cuiccd  yon.' " 


532  MY  SCHOOLS  AND   SCHOOLMASTERS  ; 

ment  to  make  himself  a  mere  enduring  name  in  literature 
than  Robertson,  but  greatly  nobler  in  sentiment,  and  of  a 
larger  grasp  of  general  intellect.  With  any  of  our  othel 
Scottish  ministers  it  might  be  invidious  to  compare  him ; 
seeing  that  some  of  the  ablest  of  them  are,  like  Henderson, 
little  more  than  mere  historic  portraits  drawn  by  their  con- 
temporaries, but  whose  true  intellectual  measure  cannot, 
fiom  the  lack  of  the  necessary  materials  on  which  to  form 
a  judgment,  be  now  taken  anew ;  and  that  many  of  the 
ethers  employed  fine  faculties  in  work,  literary  and  minis- 
terial, which,  though  important  in  its  consequences,  was 
scarce  less  ephemeral  in  its  character  than  even  the  labors 
of  the  newspaper  editor.  The  mind  of  Chalmers  was  emphati- 
cally a  many-sided  one.  Few  men  ever  came  into  friendly 
contact  with  him,  who  did  not  find  in  it,  if  they  had  really 
anything  good  in  them,  moral  or  intellectual,  a  side  that  suited 
themselves  ;  and  I  had  been  long  struck  by  that  union  which  his 
intellect  exhibited  of  a  comprehensive  philosophy  with  a  true 
poetic  faculty,  very  exquisite  in  quality,  though  dissociated 
from  what  Wordsworth  terms  the  "  accomplishment  of  verse." 
I  had  not  a  little  pleasure  in  contemplating  him  on  this  occa- 
sion as  the  poet  Chalmers.  The  day  was  calm  and  clear ;  but 
there  was  a  considerable  swell  rolling  in  from  the  German 
Ocean,  on  which  our  little  vessel  rose  and  fell,  and  which  sent 
the  surf  high  against  the  rocks.  The  sunshine  played  amid 
the  broken  crags  atop,  and  amid  the  foliage  of  an  overhanging 
wood  ;  or  caught,  half-way  down,  some  projecting  tuft  of  ivy  ; 
but  the  faces  of  the  steeper  precipices  were  brown  in  the  shade  ; 
and  where  the  waves  roared  in  deep  caves  beneath,  all  was 
dark  and  chill.  There  were  several  members  of  the  party 
who  attempted  engaging  the  Doctor  in  conversation  ;  but  he 
was  in  no  conversational  mood.  It  would  seem  as  if  the  words 
addressed  to  his  ear  failed  at  first  to  catch  his  attention,  and 
that,  with  a  painful  courtesy,  he  had  to  gather  up  their  mean- 
ing from  the  remaining  echoes,  and  to  reply  to  them  doubt- 
fully and  monosyllabically,  at  the  least  possible  expense  of 
mind.     His  face  wore,  meanwhile,  an  air  of  dreamy  enjoy- 


OK,   THE   STORY  OF  MY  EDUCATION.  53S 

ment  He  was  busy,  evidently,  among  the  crags  and  bosk;* 
hollows,  and  would  have  enjoyed  himself  more  had  he  been 
alone.  In  the  middle  of  one  noble  precipice,  that  reared  its 
tall  pine-crested  brow  more  than  a  hundred  yards  overhead, 
there  was  a  bush-covered  shelf  of  considerable  size,  but  wholly 
inaccessible ;  for  the  rock  dropped  sheer  into  it  from  above, 
and  then  sank  perpendicularly  from  its  outer  edge  to 'the  beach 
below ;  and  the  insulated  shelf,  in  its  green  unapproachable  sol- 
itude, had  evidently  caught  his  eye.  It  was  the  scene,  I  said, 
— taking  the  direction  of  his  eye  as  the  antecedent  for  the  it,-— 
it  was  the  scene,  says  tradition,  of  a  sad  tragedy  during  the 
times  of  the  persecution  of  Charles.  A  renegade  chaplain, 
rather  weak  than  wicked,  threw  himself,  in  a  state  of  wild  de- 
spair, over  the  precipice  above  ;  and  his  body,  intercepted  in  its 
fall  by  that  shelf,  lay  unburied  among  the  bushes  for  years  after, 
until  it  had  bleached  into  a  dry  and  whitened  skeleton.  Even 
as  late  as  the  last  age,  the  shelf  continued  to  retain  the  name 
of  the  "  Chaplain's  Lair."  I  found  that  my  communication, 
chiming  in  with  his  train  of  cogitation  at  the  time,  caught  both 
his  ear  and  mind  ;  and  his  reply,  though  brief  was  expressive 
of  the  gratification  which  its  snatch  of  incident  had  conveyed. 
As  our  skiff  sped  on  a  few  oar-lengths  more,  we  disturbed  a 
flock  of  sea-gulls,  that  had  been  sporting  in  the  sunshine  over 
a  shoal  of  sillochs ;  and  a  few  of  them  winged  their  way  to  a 
jutting  crag  that  rose  immediately  beside  the  shelf.  I  saw 
Chalmers'  eye  gleam  as  it  followed  them.  "  Would  you  not 
like,  Sir,"  he  said,  addressing  himself  to  my  minister,  who  sat 
beside  him, — "  Would  you  not  like  to  be  a  sea-gull  1  1 
think  I  would.  Sea-gulls  are  free  of  the  three  elements, — 
earth,  air,  and  water.  These  birds  were  sailing  but  half  a 
minute  since  without  boat,  at  once  angling  and  dining,  and 
now  they  are  already  rusticating  in  the  Chaplain's  Lair.  I 
think  I  could  enjoy  being  a  sea-gull."  I  saw  the  Doctor  once 
afterwards  in  a  similar  mood.  When  on  a  visit  to  him  in 
Burntisland,  in  the  following  year,  I  marked,  on  approaching 
the  sliDre  by  boat,  a  solitary  figure  stationed  on  the  sward- 
crested  trap-rock  which  juts  into  the  sea  immediately  below  the 


534  MY  SCHOOLS  AND  SCHOOLMASTERS; 

town  ;  and  after  the  time  spent  in  landing  and  walking  round  to 
the  spot,  there  was  the  solitary  figure  still,  standing  motionless 
as  when  first  seen.  It  was  Chalmers, — the  same  expression  of 
dreamy  enjoyment  impressed  on  his  features  as  I  had  wit> 
nessed  in  the  little  skiff,  and  with  his  eyes  turned  on  the  sea 
and  the  opposite  land.  It  was  a  lovely  morning.  A  faint 
breeze  had  just  begun  to  wrinkle  in  detached  belts  and  patches, 
the  mirror-like  blackness  of  the  previous  calm,  in  which  the 
broad  Frith  had  lain  sleeping  since  day-break  ;  and  the  sun 
light  danced  on  the  new-raised  wavelets ;  while  a  thin  long 
wreath  of  blue  mist,  which  seemed  coiling  its  tail  like  a  snake 
round  the  distant  Inchkeith,  was  slowly  raising  the  folds  of  its 
dragon-like  neck  and  head  from  off  the  Scottish  capital,  dim 
in  the  distance,  and  unveiling  fortalice,  and  tower,  and  spire, 
and  the  noble  curtain  of  blue  hills  behind.  And  there  was 
Chalmers,  evidently  enjoying  the  exquisiteness  of  the  scene,  as 
only  by  the  true  poet  scenery  can  be  enjoyed.  Those  striking 
metaphors  which  so  abound  in  his  writings,  and  which  so 
often,  without  apparent  effort,  lay  the  material  world  before 
the  reader,  show  how  thoroughly  he  must  have  drunk  in  the 
beauties  of  nature ;  the  images  retained  in  his  mind  became, 
like  words  to  the  ordinary  man,  the  signs  by  which  he  thought, 
and,  as  such,  formed  an  important  element  in  the  power  of 
his  thinking.  I  have  seen  his  Astronomical  Discourses  dis- 
paragingly dealt  with  by  a  slim  and  meagre  critic,  as  if  they 
had  been  but  the  chapters  of  a  mere  treatise  on  astronomy, 
— a  thing  which,  of  course,  any  ordinary  man  could  write, — 
mayhap  even  the  critic  himself.  The  Astronomical  Discour- 
ses, on  the  other  hand,  no  one  could  have  written  save  Chalmers. 
Nominally  a  series  of  sermons,  they  in  reality  represent,  and 
in  the  present  century  form  perhaps  the  only  worthy  repre- 
sentatives of,  that  school  of  philosophic  poetry  to  which,  in  an- 
cient literature,  the  work  of  Lucretius  belonged,  and  of  which, 
in  the  literature  of  our  own  country,  the  "  Seasons"  of  Thomson, 
and  Akenside's  "  Pleasures  of  the  Imagination,"  furnish  ade- 
quate examples.  He  would,  I  suspect,  be  no  discriminating 
critic  who  would  deal  with  *he  "Seasons"  as  if  they  formed 


535 

merely  the  journal  of  a  naturalist,  or  by  the  poem  of  Aken* 
side  as  if  it  were  simply  a  metaphysical  treatise. 

The  autumn  of  this  year  brought  me  an  unexpected  but 
very  welcome  visitor,  in  my  old  Marcus'  Cave  friend  Finlay  ; 
and  when  I  visited  all  my  former  haunts,  to  take  leave  of  them 
ere  I  quitted  the  place  for  the  scene  of  my  future  labors,  I 
had  him  to  accompany  me.  Though  for  many  years  a  planter 
'n  Jamaica,  his  affections  were  still  warm,  and  his  literary 
tastes  unchanged.  He  was  a  writer,  as  of  old,  of  sweet  simple 
verses,  and  as  sedulous  a  reader  as  ever;  and,  had  time  permit- 
ted, we  found  we  could  have  kindled  fires  together  in  the  caves, 
as  we  had  done  more  than  twenty  years  before,  and  have  ranged 
the  shores  for  shell-fish  and  crabs.  He  had  had,  however,  in 
passing  through  life,  his  full  share  of  its  cares  and  sorrows. 
A  young  lady  to  whom  he  had  been  engaged  in  early  youth 
had  perished  at  sea,  and  he  had  remained  single  for  her  sake. 
He  had  to  struggle,  too,  in  his  business  relations,  with  the  em- 
barrassments incident  fro  a  sinking  colony  ;  and  though  a  West 
Indian  climate  was  beginning  to  tell  on  his  constitution,  his 
circumstances,  though  tolerably  easy,  were  not  such  as  to  per- 
mit his  permanent  residence  in  Scotland.  He  retured  in  the 
following  year  to  Jamaica;  and  I  saw,  some  time  after,  in  a 
Kingston  paper,  an  intimation  of  his  election  to  the  Colonial 
House  of  Representatives,  and  the  outline  of  a  well-toned 
sensible  address  to  his  constituents,  in  which  he  urged  that  the 
sole  hope  of  the  colony  lay  in  the  education  and  mental  ele- 
vation of  its  negro  population  to  the  standard  of  the  people  at 
home.  I  have  been  informed  that  the  latter  part  of  his  life 
was,  like  that  of  many  of  the  Jamaica  planters  in  their  altered 
circumstances,  pretty  much  a  struggle;  and  his  health  at  length 
breaking  down,  in  a  climate  little  favorable  to  Europeans, 
he  died  about  three  years  ago,  with  the  exception  of  my  friend 
■){  the  Doocot  Cave,  now  Free  Church  minister  of  Nigg,  the 
last  of  my  Marcus'  Cave  companions.  Their  remains  lie  scat- 
tered over  half  the  globe. 

I  closed  my  connection  with  the  bank  at  the  termination  of 
its  financial  year ;  gave  a  few  weeks  very  sedulously  to  ge- 


536 

ology,  during  which  I  was  fortunate  enough  to  find  specimens 
on  which  Agassiz  has  founded  two  of  his  fossil  species ;  got, 
at  parting,  an  elegant  breakfast-service  of  plate  from  a  kind 
and  numerous  circle  of  friends,  of  all  shades  of  politics  and 
both  sides  of  the  Church  ;  and  was  entertained  at  a  public  din- 
ner, at  which  I  attempted  a  speech,  that  got  on  but  indifferently, 
though  it  looked  quite  well  enough  in  my  friend  Mr.  Carruthers* 
report,  and  which  was,  I  suppose,  in  some  sort  apologized  for 
by  the  fiddlers,  wrho  struck  up  at  its  close,  "  A  man's  a  man 
for  a'  that."  It  was,  I  felt,  not  the  least  gratifying  part  of  the 
entertainment,  that  old  Uncle  Sandy  was  present,  and  that  his 
health  was  cordially  drunk  by  the  company,  in  the  recognized 
character  of  my  best  and  earliest  friend.  And  then,  taking 
leave  of  my  mother  and  uncle,  of  my  respected  minister, 
and  my  honored  superior  in  the  bank,  Mr.  Ross,  I  set  out 
for  Edinburgh,  and  in  a  few  days  after  was  seated  at  the  edi- 
torial desk, — a  point  at  which,  for  the  present,  the  story  of 
my  education  must  terminate.  I  wrote  for  my  paper  during 
the  first  twelvemonth,  a  series  of  geological  chapters,  which 
wrere  fortunate  enough  to  attract  the  notice  of  the  geologists  of 
the  British  Association,  assembled  that  year  at  Glasgow,  and 
which,  in  the  collected  form,  compose  my  little  work  on  thf 
Old  Red  Sandstone.  The  paper  itself  rose  rapidly  in  circula- 
tion, till  it  ultimately  attained  to  its  place  among  what  are 
known  as  our  first-class  Scottish  newspapers ;  and  of  its  sub- 
scribers, perhaps  a  more  considerable  proportion  of  the  whole 
are  men  who  have  received  a  university  education,  than  can  be 
reckoned  by  any  other  Scotch  journal  of  the  same  number  of 
readers.  And  during  the  course  of  the  first  three  years,  my 
employers  doubled  my  salary.  I  am  sensible,  however,  that 
these  are  but  small  achievements.  In  looking  back  upon  my 
youth,  I  see,  methinks,a  wild  fruit  tree,  rich  in  leaf  and  blossom; 
and  it  is  mortifying  enough  to  mark  how  very  few  of  the  blos- 
soms have  set,  and  how  diminutive  and  imperfectly  formed  the 
fruit  is  into  which  even  the  productive  few  have  been  developed. 
A  right  use  of  the  opportunities  of  instruction  afforded  me  in 
early  youth  would  have  made  me  a  scholar  ere  my  twenty- 


OR,    THE   STORY   OF   MY   EDUCATION.        537-551 

fifth  year,  and  have  saved  to  me  at  least  ten  of  the  best  years  of 
life, — years  which  were  spent  in  obscure  and  humble  occupa- 
tions. But  while  my  story  must  serve  to  show  the  evils  which 
result  from  truant  carelessness  in  boyhood,  and  that  what  was 
sport  to  the  young  lad  may  assume  the  form  of  serious  mis- 
fortune to  the  man,  it  may  also  serve  to  show,  that  much  may 
be  done  by  after  diligence,  to  retrieve  an  early  error  of  this 
kind, — that  life  itself  is  a  school,  and  Nature  always  a  fresh 
study, — and  that  the  man  who  keeps  his  eyes  and  his  mind 
open  will  always  find  fitting,  though,  it  may  be,  hard  school- 
masters, to  speed  him  on  in  his  life-long  education. 


14  DAY  USE 

:    RETURN  TO  DESK  FROM  WHICH  BORROWED 

LOAN  DEPT. 


This  book  is  due  on  the  last  date  stamped  below,  or 
^%.     &  on  the  date  to  which  renewed. 

^>S.  Renewed  books  are  subject  to  immediate  recall. 

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